]]>Self-isolation is causing stress, creating big problems for relationships, and huge opportunities for apps that help people improve their relationships. LifeCouple, a relationship empowerment platform, combines a compelling product (a “democratized therapy solution”) and individualized marketing to help couples address, monitor, and improve their relationships. Through gamification, attractive incentives, and built-in “track-ability” indexes, LifeCouple doesn’t just empower people—it powers impressive conversion rates and fuels lasting loyalty. In this episode of our bi-weekly series Reimagine Growth, sponsored by CleverTap, host Peggy Anne Salz talks with Sean Rones, the serial entrepreneur, and inventor who founded LifeCouple. They discuss the “app journeys” he has architected and the tech stack he relies on to deliver meaningful content and drive deep customer connection. Sean, whose determination puts him in the same league with Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, shares the shortcuts marketers can use to make messaging emotive and effective.

We are in challenging and exciting times as marketers everywhere on the planet rewrite the playbook to drive positive results for their campaigns and their customers. To do both, we need guidance and good advice from marketers who freely share their expertise and experience. Reimagine Growth is a series equipping marketers to take charge of change in the marketplace — check out all the videos in this series here and subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep updated as new videos are added.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/lessons-from-relationship-empowerment-platform-lifecouple-to-nurture-customer-connection/feed/0Shopping Apps Are Exploding, But Should You Keep The Influx Of Organics?https://mobilegroove.com/shopping-apps-are-exploding-but-should-you-keep-the-influx-of-organics/
https://mobilegroove.com/shopping-apps-are-exploding-but-should-you-keep-the-influx-of-organics/#respondThu, 14 May 2020 10:31:43 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20674Shopping apps are soaring in popularity, but the influx of organics may be too much of a good thing. The opportunity: Costs and conversions are in a rare balance, with install-to-purchase rates rising through the roof. The challenge: Marketers need to make tough choices about the new users they should retarget and retain, and the ones they should let lapse.
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]]>Shopping apps are soaring in popularity, but the influx of organics may be too much of a good thing. The opportunity: Costs and conversions are in a rare balance, with install-to-purchase rates rising through the roof. The challenge: Marketers need to make tough choices about the new users they should retarget and retain, and the ones they should let lapse. To help marketers make the right call, our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Scott Kepnach, Head of Growth Marketing Partnerships at Rappi, mega high growth, consumer tech startup positioning to be the everything store of Latin America. Scott, a Mobile Hero recognized for his accomplishments, weighs in on what marketers need to monitor and measure to turn browsers into buyers. He also draws from his personal journey ‒ across cities, continents, and careers ‒ to share how marketers can unlock talent and unleash powerful performance marketing.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/shopping-apps-are-exploding-but-should-you-keep-the-influx-of-organics/feed/0Mobile Marketing Experts Show How Fintech Apps Will Emerge Fighting Fit From The Covid-19 Crisishttps://mobilegroove.com/mobile-marketing-experts-show-how-fintech-apps-will-emerge-fighting-fit-from-the-covid-19-crisis/
https://mobilegroove.com/mobile-marketing-experts-show-how-fintech-apps-will-emerge-fighting-fit-from-the-covid-19-crisis/#respondMon, 11 May 2020 18:05:31 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20622Rattled by unemployment numbers and wracked by the economic fallout of Covid-19, people everywhere are forced to re-evaluate how they will make and save money. Keenly aware of where their paycheck is going and eager to improve financial wellness, record numbers of consumers are looking to mobile finance apps for advice and answers.

]]>Rattled by unemployment numbers and wracked by the economic fallout of Covid-19, people everywhere are forced to re-evaluate how they will make and save money. Keenly aware of where their paycheck is going and eager to improve financial wellness, record numbers of consumers are looking to mobile finance apps for advice and answers.

Interest in and comfort with mobile finance was strong ahead of the crisis, with the sector showing an impressive growth trajectory that started last year. According to the Mobile Finance Apps Report—published by mobile app marketing and retargeting platform Liftoff in partnership with app market intelligence provider App Annie—mobile money management saw massive uptake in 2019. (Fellow Forbes contributor John Koetsier analyzed the April report in detail here.) Globally, consumers accessed finance apps over a trillion times in 2019. The flurry of activity had a positive impact where it counts. Conversion costs dropped by over 76% and registration rates rose by more than 71% compared to the previous year.

“Consumers are turning to finance apps at record levels amidst volatility in the market and uncertainty over the economy from the coronavirus pandemic,” Amir Ghodrati, App Annie Director of Market Insights, told me in an interview. Drawing from U.S. data, Ghodrati notes that time spent in-app on Android devices has grown by over half (55%) from the week of December 29, 2019, to the peak week in March and April (April 12-18, 2020). “We have seen similar levels of growth worldwide amidst the pandemic,” he adds.

Globally, mobile finance app use is soaring as consumers seek guidance and assistance to improve their financial wellbeing in the era of Covid-19. APP ANNIE

The trend is likely to accelerate, making digital-only the new norm for financial services. Analysts at Juniper Research are bullish. They reckon over 1.75 billion smartphone users used their devices for banking purposes in 2019, compared to 800 million the previous year. But a meteoric rise in mobile and app use to manage personal finances will no doubt fuel fierce competition for increasingly mobile-savvy customers.

What are the key capabilities sure to distinguish leading app providers from the also-rans? It’s a tough one to call. But fintech companies that pivot to being a lifeline for their customers are best positioned to take their place in the winner’s circle. “This is not a time for chest-beating, celebrating your brand or making strong competitive claims,” Juliet D’Ambrosio, Senior Director of Strategy at Adrenaline, a firm specialized in financial institution marketing strategies, said in an interview with The Financial Brand. “This is a time for empathy.”

The growing hunger for help

Unfortunately, a significant number of financial institutions are missing the plot. Rather than reaching out with messages of potential relief for consumers, many banks and credit unions are responding with messaging that is tone-deaf to consumer needs. An ongoing consumer poll by J.D. Power, a U.S.-based data analytics and consumer intelligence company, reveals only one-third of Americans are convinced companies genuinely care about their situation. That’s a “huge emotional disconnect,” Bob Neuhaus, Vice-President of Financial Services Intelligence at J.D. Powers, said in an interview.

Financial brands that go silent are making an even bigger mistake. As the impact of the pandemic lingers, so will the bad taste when consumers reflect on the absence of helpful advice to guide them through these anxiety-inducing times. But this ship hasn’t sailed—yet. There’s still time for financial brand marketers to improve their outreach efforts and build customer trust.

To help companies as they architect strategies to deliver on what I call the essential three Cs (campaigns, content and communications), I draw from interviews with three expert mobile marketers, Liftoff Mobile Heroes recognized for their app marketing accomplishments. They share actionable advice marketers can follow to drive customer connection in a time when it matters most. [Disclosure: I regularly interview Mobile Heroes as the host of Mobile Presence, a top-ranked weekly podcast for which I am not paid.]

Credit Sesame: Focus on the topics that are top of mind

Information is power. But it can be even more empowering if access to it equips consumers to take charge of their financial futures in challenging times. This is the thinking that has guided Credit Sesame, a consumer financial health management platform, since its launch in 2010. Back then, many consumers were struggling to get back on their feet after the 2008 financial crisis pulled the rug out from under them. Credit Sesame decided to provide its customers–the majority of whom live paycheck to paycheck–access to free credit scores and information to help them improve their financial wellness. Today, Credit Sesame builds on that foundation with SesameThrive, a platform that provides budgeting tips, virtual tools and calculators, personalized credit recommendations and the latest information around government assistance programs, and Sesame Cash, a free digital bank account that combines insights from both consumers’ cash and credit with the goal to improve both.

Derrick Nguyen, Senior Marketing Manager CREDIT SESAME

For the time being, the company has shifted attention from acquisition to engagement and retention, betting on inspiring human stories and a personalized experience to drive customer connection and positive results. It’s a strategy that is paying dividends in more ways than one, and Credit Sesame’s customer satisfaction scores in April were the company’s highest ever. Derrick Nguyen, Senior Marketing Manager at Credit Sesame, told me in an interview, “We are focusing on personal stories and prescriptive content to support our members through this challenging time,” Nguyen explains. “We lean on the customer successes and feedback as guidance for tools and services we provide.”

The combination of relevant content and human stories is incredibly compelling. His advice: Put the customer first, help them visualize their goals, and tailor content to fit their needs. “Our best performing content has been articles that focus on real people and real results,” Nguyen says. “We show that it’s about more than just a credit score—we help consumers on their path to financial wellness, show them what’s attainable, and what actions can create better opportunities for themselves and their families. This not only helps inspire new members to sign up, but also creates strong loyalty among our growing customer base.”

Current: Build the creative and the audience will come

At Current, the focus is on “creating better financial outcomes for people and their unique lives.” The company was founded with the belief that banking should be accessible and affordable for everyone. And it has built its own banking core technology to deliver on the company’s key value proposition: getting people paid faster. It’s a capability that allows Current to be there for customers, particularly those stressed over their overall financial situation. Today, Current (which closed its Series B funding and announced a new partnership with Visa) offers a host of products to help provide relief. These include personal checking accounts without hidden overdraft or minimum balance fees and instant refunds of the holds gas stations put on credit cards when consumers fill up at the pump.

These are products that serve a variety of modern lifestyles and campaigns, and communications must deliver unique and valuable messages to individual customers, according to Adam Hadi, VP of Marketing at Current. “The requirement for personalization (in marketing) has never been stronger,” he says. Current focuses resources on developing unique creatives and leaves the work of delivering the right ad to the right person to machine learning algorithms and the capability of ad network partners such as Facebook.

Want to target a younger female audience? Current develops the creatives and lets the image find the audience. “We’re running more ad creatives that I’ve ever personally run in my career at any given time simultaneously,” Hadi explains. “Rather than relying on audience segmentation, it’s a case of build the creative and the audience and the audience will come,” Hadi explains.

Drew Fung, Director of Performance Marketing CURRENT

For Drew Fung, Director of Performance Marketing at Current and a Mobile Hero, “giving up more control to algorithms and automation” higher in the funnel empowers marketers to get more human about their messaging. Showing empathy at scale is a tall order, and one Current is tackling by tapping micro-influencers and user-generated content. “They share genuine stories, showing—not telling—how we are helping our customers, a subset of Americans who are really struggling at this time.” His advice: “Show people, not product.” As a rule, Current avoids screenshots and elements that make their offer feel like a banking app, preferring to empathize how value propositions, such as getting paid faster, allow people to improve their quality of life and—ultimately—their financial wellness. The approach appears to resonate with audiences, and Current, which says it has grown to host 800,000 accounts, is gearing up to announce another milestone.

Intuit: Focus on delivering advice, not alerts

Unprecedented times call on companies to unleash amazing innovation. Intuit, a global financial platform serving consumers, small businesses and the self-employed, has stepped up efforts and initiatives, including Intuit Aid Assist, to help its customers understand and access government aid and relief programs. Intuit’s partnerships and new offerings (Intuit Aid Assist is one of three) focus on helping consumers and small businesses get quick access to relief.

Vishal Korlipara, Senior Manager, Mobile Marketing Strategy INTUIT

Now marketing must follow suit. “Sending a push notification that tells customers they are over budget on a purchase, for example, will understandably get a negative response,” Vishal Korlipara, a Mobile Hero and Senior Manager, Mobile Marketing Strategy at Intuit, told me in an interview. His work revolves around ensuring notifications are “personal and personally motivating” and all messaging reflects what is happening now in people’s lives.

“What used to be an alert is now an answer,” he explains. Take a case where a customer has exceeded their monthly budget. Before the pandemic, he says, the notification would have been a statement of fact (you have exceeded your budget). Now it’s a show of solidarity. “It’s more like let’s work together to reallocate your budget in the next few months during these difficult times.” Empathy isn’t just good for the brand; it’s good for business. “It has helped with engagement of our current user base and even shown a small uplift in acquisition through word-of-mouth and organic.”

Like many finance companies, spending on paid media at Intuit is taking a back seat while efforts focus sharply on aligning product and product marketing. “It’s about offering solutions and showing how these solutions help customers improve their situation,” he explains. The outcome: new users may be down against forecasts, but “DAUs (Daily Active Users) and MAUs (Monthly Active Users) are up against forecasts” as engagement rates climb. “That’s a testament to our engagement program and our core product features.” His advice: Use the pandemic’s big reset opportunity to focus on fixing low priority issues. “Focus inwards and double-down on product and product marketing.” But don’t expect amazing features to sell themselves. “Start brainstorming now around the content and guerilla tactics that will allow you to maximize reach and growth in these times.”

Light at the end of the tunnel

“2020 will be challenging for fintechs to navigate, but there are better times ahead,” Radboud Vlaar, Managing Director at Finch Capital, said in an interview with Fintechnews. The company’s latest analytical report titled “Fintech: The Future PostCV-19” forecasts that the “crisis mode” will last until Q3 2020 “followed by a 12- to 18-month recovery.”

The recovery period will also see “digital-only become the new industry norm in financial services.” It stands to reason, then, that the players that have invested in customer-centric innovation during this period of uncertainty will be best positioned to come out fighting. As we’ve shown, it’s a win-win situation, delivering valuable services to consumers and driving strong and enduring business outcomes.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/mobile-marketing-experts-show-how-fintech-apps-will-emerge-fighting-fit-from-the-covid-19-crisis/feed/0How The Sole Supplier Harnesses Community To Rocket Commerce And Cash In On The Sneaker Boomhttps://mobilegroove.com/how-the-sole-supplier-harnesses-community-to-rocket-commerce-and-cash-in-on-the-sneaker-boom/
https://mobilegroove.com/how-the-sole-supplier-harnesses-community-to-rocket-commerce-and-cash-in-on-the-sneaker-boom/#respondThu, 07 May 2020 10:08:13 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20669Massive interest from consumers passionate about performance footwear has pushed sneakers to the top of the hot product list. Limited edition collections are experiencing the fastest growth in the sports footwear market, but it’s not just about the product.
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]]>Massive interest from consumers passionate about performance footwear has pushed sneakers to the top of the hot product list. Limited edition collections are experiencing the fastest growth in the sports footwear market, but it’s not just about the product. Consumers want to celebrate the unique lifestyle we associate with sneakers, and they are congregating on The Sole Supplier to do it. The destination, which combines price comparison services with compelling content, has become the authority on sneaker news, release dates and editorial. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with George Sullivan, The Sole Supplier’s CEO and Founder, to talk about the communication do’s and don’ts digital-first companies should follow to ignite shopper interest and inspire purchases. George also draws from his experience as an entrepreneur and shares the secret to achieving consistent and impressive 70% year-on-year growth. He talks about the role of personalization and automation and offers smart tips for connecting with “tribes” to drive loyalty and virality.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-the-sole-supplier-harnesses-community-to-rocket-commerce-and-cash-in-on-the-sneaker-boom/feed/0Shift Marketing Strategy To Acknowledge New Realityhttps://mobilegroove.com/shift-marketing-strategy-to-acknowledge-new-reality/
https://mobilegroove.com/shift-marketing-strategy-to-acknowledge-new-reality/#respondThu, 30 Apr 2020 08:30:04 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20611Brand management has never been easy. Finding ways to communicate effectively and appropriately in the COVID-19 era, when consumers are deeply anxious about their families and their future, poses an even greater challenge.

]]>Brand management has never been easy. Finding ways to communicate effectively and appropriately in the COVID-19 era, when consumers are deeply anxious about their families and their future, poses an even greater challenge. Marketers must rewrite the familiar playbook to achieve performance and campaign goals in the short term while doubling down on efforts to build brand and trust for the long run.

And marketers ought to show, not tell, according to a new report from data intelligence firm Morning Consult. “It’s no longer about talking about values; it’s about demonstrating them.” Drawing from a survey of 2,200 adult Americans on March 28-29, the research—aptly titled “Weathering the Storm: Brand Management in the COVID-19 Era”—advises companies to offer solid advice rather than a hard sell. “Companies have a clear opportunity to be there for customers when the chips are down and, in doing so, build their foundation for substantial long-term brand equity gains,” the report says.

Before companies can show they care, they must understand the dramatic shift in consumer needs at a time of crisis. This calls for “acknowledging the social, financial and other realities of this pandemic, empathizing with people’s concerns and offering practical solutions.” The report also highlights good reasons why marketers should “not disengage” from the moment, but rather ensure that their marketing and communications reflect the new reality. While consumers don’t blame business for their troubles, the report reveals that people are looking to companies to help them get through the tough times and lead the U.S. out of the crisis.

Improving financial health through transparency

The report shows how actions companies take today can ultimately drive positive brand attitudes and influence consumer purchase preferences when the skies clear. All businesses will likely benefit from the advice to “stay in touch with your humanity”—but the recommendation is especially pertinent to the financial service industry in these troubled times.

Let’s face it. Americans are emotionally drained and financially strained. The pandemic’s perfect storm of market and mental conditions spotlight companies that step up to help consumers plan and protect their financial wellbeing. Investing in feel-good advertising or Pollyanna phrases about how we’re all in this together is a fail. A comprehensive strategy to address consumers’ immediate day-to-day financial concerns can build brand affinity now—and strengthen trust in the future.

It’s a blueprint that Credit Sesame, a consumer financial health management platform, is following to help consumers who have been affected by the COVID-19 fallout. The majority of Credit Sesame customers, along with more than half of Americans, live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to balance the competing goals of paying bills and saving money. To serve this customer base, Credit Sesame, which launched in 2010, after the last financial crisis, started out providing consumers access to free credit scores and information to democratize access to credit and financial wellness.

Today, the advanced machine learning and AI required to help customers improve and manage their credit also equips Credit Sesame to create a new category within personal finance. In March, Credit Sesame extended its offer with Sesame Cash, a new digital banking service that integrates cash and credit. It doesn’t just help consumers manage their wallets in one place: Credit Sesame also deploys its expertise and computing power to analyze consumers’ finances and their repayment ability against their credit to provide its customer base of 15 million with personalized recommendations and advice. More than half of customers see credit score improvements within six months, with one in five achieving a boost of 50 points or more.

Marrying personal finance advice to digital banking is a winning combination on two fronts. For consumer lenders, it makes Credit Sesame a more valuable business partner able to ensure customers are more qualified and less likely to fall behind in payments. For customers, deep insights into cash flows and dedication to driving financial inclusion are capabilities they can count on as they struggle to improve credit scores, pay down debt and save money.

This week the company took its efforts a giant step further, launching SesameThrive. The platform provides consumers budgeting tips, virtual tools and calculators, personalized credit recommendations and the latest information around government assistance programs. “Through SesameThrive, we are creating a one-stop resource for consumers’ entire financial journey to help them minimize the impact of COVID-19 while steering them on a path to financial stability and recovery as soon as possible,” Adrian Nazari, Credit Sesame CEO, said in a statement. “We don’t want to just help them survive this difficult time—we want to help them thrive on the other side of it.”

Rewriting the marketing and messaging playbook

The SesameThrive product exemplifies how Credit Sesame sides with customers, doing what it can to help them establish a better path to financial wellness. Now the focus is on rewriting the playbook to match the mission (helping customers make informed decisions to grow their cash and credit) with the messaging (showing empathy with real people and their daily problems). During New Rules Of Marketing Engagement, a live chat series where marketers discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their plans and priorities, Jana Jacobs, Credit Sesame’s Director of Product Marketing, discussed efforts underway to redefine customer engagement. It’s not about advertising to audiences; it’s about connecting with them, she said. Content and campaigns must show a company is “conscious” of customers’ problems and avoid “appearing tone deaf” to their concerns. [Full disclosure: I produce the 8-part live chat series in close collaboration with CleverTap, a project for which I am paid.]

While Jacobs says she and her team are developing new ways to communicate in a crisis, the underlying rules of engagement are not new. It’s back to basics, she told the panel, starting with a strategy anchored in a “customer-first” mindset. For the time being the company has shifted attention from acquisition to retention, spending more budget on campaigns and content (including the SesameThrive platform) that support members through this challenging time, driving connection and building trust. “This is the time for companies to lean into consumers’ need for empathy and information that can serve as a reliable source of truth at a time when they need it most,” Jacobs said after the chat.

In practice, this means “pulling back from the focus on growth and honing in on what we can do better for our existing customers and how we can deepen those relationships,” Credit Sesame’s Nazari told me in an interview. “Right now, it’s about protection and helping our customers withstand the shock at a time when their finances are distressed, and their incomes are impacted.” He’s also preparing to draft the “next chapter” in the marketing playbook. It’s one where Credit Sesame, drawing from a decade of customer insights, fuels a virtuous cycle of trust, engagement and, ultimately, advocacy. “Customers want guidance to prepare for financial recovery post-COVID-19, but they expect personalized advice and recommendations that show we know where they’re coming from and can help them get where they want to go.”

Business decision makers are people, too

Companies also need to inject humanity and empathy into their B2B communications. This is the view of Charles Orlando, Head of Global Communications and Brand at CleverTap, a mobile marketing platform that helps companies convert, retain and grow their users at scale.In his latest post on LinkedIn, Orlando provides a go-forward plan for B2B companies, encouraging them to get away from business as usual. Doing anything else, he warns, is to “brand oneself tone-deaf (at best), or alienate the very people/prospects we are attempting to reach and engage (more likely).”

Instead, he says, marketers must adopt advertising and communications that reflect the new reality and address “four critical, human psychological needs.” Essentially, Orlando gives Maslow’s hierarchy of needs a refresh for marketing in a pandemic. Maslow’s theory in psychology divides our human needs into five levels, placing the most basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid and elevating our most complex needs to the top. Marketing and messaging, which has tended to emphasize top-of-the pyramid aspirational goals and status-seeking, must be rebalanced to address basic human needs for connection, security and stability.

“Brands who are trying to sell products and services to companies are competing with the fact that critical survival needs of the individual are not currently being met,” Orlando observes. He identifies four deep desires we share as humans in these unprecedented times:

Acknowledgment that we are not alone

Connection to a person, brand or entity that is offering help

Guidance on how to navigate through the Evolving Normal

Hope that things will not remain this way

The priorities for business professionals in a B2B marketing scenario are strikingly similar. Using the same lens, Orlando concludes professionals have four requirements:

They want to connect with others to solve current problems.

They want guidance to plan for the future.

They require actionable solutions from trusted sources.

They will not be pushed into a purchasing decision in an uncertain environment.

Whether B2B or B2C, acknowledging and accommodating customers’ new normal calls for a holistic strategy refresh, not just a “we’re here for you” subject line. Deploy innate human empathy along with business acumen to discover the messaging mix that’s right for the times. Test and learn, and be prepared to adjust…which is wise advice even outside of work these days.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/shift-marketing-strategy-to-acknowledge-new-reality/feed/0What We Can Learn From Gaming App Marketers And Advertising Channels You Shouldn’t Misshttps://mobilegroove.com/what-we-can-learn-from-gaming-app-marketers-and-advertising-channels-you-shouldnt-miss/
https://mobilegroove.com/what-we-can-learn-from-gaming-app-marketers-and-advertising-channels-you-shouldnt-miss/#respondThu, 30 Apr 2020 07:54:47 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20661The gaming industry is one of the most profitable entertainment businesses in the world, and marketers can learn a lot from it. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Melissa Lertsmitivanta, Marketing Director at national real estate portal Realtor.com.
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]]>The gaming industry is one of the most profitable entertainment businesses in the world, and marketers can learn a lot from it. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Melissa Lertsmitivanta, Marketing Director at national real estate portal Realtor.com. She draws from her impressive track record at Electronic Arts to highlight some top tips all mobile markets can use to reach and exceed campaign goals. Melissa, a Mobile Hero recognized for her user acquisition expertise and accomplishments, also talks candidly about where she sees the low-hanging fruit in the fast-moving app marketing space. Finally, she refreshes the advice she offered women in marketing (which appeared in Forbes) and tells us how women can help themselves and other women in the Covid-19 era.

For an episode of Reimagine Growth, Peggy Anne Salz recently caught up with John Spottiswood, Chief Operating Officer at Jerry.ai, a free, automated agent who takes the pain and expense out of car and home ownership. John shares the strategy that allowed his company to achieve a 20% bump in conversions. He also talks about changes he has observed and best practices for marketing in the COVID-19 era.

Put people before profits

If ever there was a time to put people before profits—it’s now. Your customers want to know that you aren’t just trying to make a quick buck off of them in their time of need and that your company is helping be a part of the solution in any way it can. And John says he sees that even the often-maligned insurance industry is taking that message to heart.

“A lot of our carrier partners are actually returning money to our customers because they’re not driving as much and, therefore, they’re not getting in accidents which is really nice,” he says. John also tells us that because Jerry.ai’s mission is to save customers money even when there isn’t a global pandemic putting pressure on people, the company was well situated to help as customers look for savings any where they can.

John says Jerry.ai has saved customers an average of a little less than $900. “So that’s a lot of money that we’re putting back into people’s pockets for spending a few minutes of their time with us and I think I really feel good about that,” he says.

Convincing customers to convert

John and the Jerry.ai team have a slightly different challenge than many marketers. They are often looking to find people who aren’t actively interested in or shopping for new insurance. He says, “We’re reaching out to people that probably have felt like they needed to shop insurance or should have, could save money for five or six years but it just always seemed too painful, they’re worried about personal information getting out or people calling them once they completed the process.”

With the casual shopper in mind, the Jerry.ai team focuses less on personalizing the advertising message, and more on delivering a targeted customer experience. “Where we really get personal is once we’ve gotten them into our flow,” says John “You can imagine every customer comes from a different situation. Some have existing insurance and they’re looking to see whether they can save money on it. Others, you know, have had insurance in the past but they aren’t currently insured either because they didn’t have a car, they’ve been out of the country or maybe, you know, they had a lapse.”

Others may be buying insurance for the first time or have had accidents impact their premiums.

“And then of course they all have a different sort of demand for how much insurance they want, how many assets they have that they feel need to be protected. And so we need to be able to communicate very individually based on their situation.”

All of this data allows John’s team to communicate on a more personal level. For instance, he says, when the team knows it can save a customer a lot of money on their existing policy, they get a very different message than someone who might be under-insured at the moment. “So, you can imagine how personal this messaging needs to be,” John says. “And we have built tools to enable that very personalized messaging… Literally we’ve micro-segmented to the point where there’s almost 30 separate journeys depending on which group you fall into.”

Of course, John says, none of this would be possible without the right platform. The ability to automate these journeys hasn’t just save the Jerry.ai team precious time, it’s actually increased conversions. “Yes, we’ve estimated that our messaging…probably increased our conversion rate at least 20% and the savings on an individual basis is in the tens of thousands a month in terms of what it would take to have human beings, you know, manually triggering these messages even if they were canned, meaning not personally penned.”

To learn more about how the Jerry.ai team is tackling personalization during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, check out the full interview here.

We are in challenging and exciting times as marketers everywhere on the planet rewrite the playbook to drive positive results for their campaigns and their customers. To do both, we need guidance and good advice from marketers who freely share their expertise and experience. Reimagine Growth is a series equipping marketers to take charge of change in the marketplace — check out all the videos in this series here and subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep updated as new videos are added.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/jerry-ai-talks-personalization-during-the-pandemic/feed/0A Lesson in Behavior: It’s Not All About Datahttps://mobilegroove.com/a-lesson-in-behavior-its-not-all-about-data/
https://mobilegroove.com/a-lesson-in-behavior-its-not-all-about-data/#respondWed, 29 Apr 2020 11:01:29 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20632Is our data-driven era driving out the magic of marketing? More importantly, is it possible that being 100% data-driven isn’t actually supported by the data? It’s a bit of a mind-bender, which is why John Koetsier and I decided to tackle the data on data in our latest installment of Retention Masterclass.

]]>Is our data-driven era driving out the magic of marketing? More importantly, is it possible that being 100% data-driven isn’t actually supported by the data? It’s a bit of a mind-bender, which is why John Koetsier and I decided to tackle the data on data in our latest installment of Retention Masterclass.

“The idea of a customer journey is a grotesque oversimplification, usually,” says our guest Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, and author of Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life. “But nonetheless, if you have anything sequential going on in behavior, it makes sense to optimize from the end backwards. So, my argument would be if you’re an organization, get your repeat purchase and your retention fixed before you start worrying about acquisition.”

But getting your retention fixed is all about data, isn’t it? Well… maybe.

The Art of Behavioral Science

“People have this huge argument about behavioral science. Is it a science?” Rory asks. “And in the sense of engineering on Newtonian physics, no, it isn’t. Right? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say with complete certainty, ‘Do X, it will definitely work.’ What I can do is use behavioral science to massively widen the solution space by saying, ‘If I suggested you do X, you would look at me as if I were a lunatic, but given the potential gains of doing X, believe me, there’s enough I know from behavioral science to know that even if I can’t guarantee it will work, it’s emphatically worth testing.’”

What’s Rory’s point? Don’t confine yourself by only testing the things that you think should be important. When you do so, “you’re narrowing your solution space dangerously.”

“And in fact, there’s evidence of this which shows from people in the programmatic space,” he adds, “which shows that the more things you test, the more extraordinary successes emerge.”

Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb, test something that may seem silly, and wait for the results to roll in.

Marketing may not be a hard science, but that’s to your benefit. Because, just like in psychology, “if you change the context of something to a tiny degree you can completely change its meaning, the emotional response it generates, and therefore, for example, the sales it generates.”

Rory gives us an example: “‘Avis is #2 in Rental Cars.,’ That’s actually an ad for Hertz, standing on its own. You add, ‘So we try harder,’ and it’s an ad for Avis. Suddenly you’ve turned, literally, lead into gold because you’ve turned a weakness into a strength.” Data can’t tell you how people will respond, but what you know about people gives you a good idea that people—especially those who prefer a craft brew to mass produced swill—will prioritize quality over quantity.

To learn more about how Rory applies this to retention, read the transcript below.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/a-lesson-in-behavior-its-not-all-about-data/feed/0How The Martech Industry Is Stepping Up To Help Customers Cope With COVID-19https://mobilegroove.com/how-the-martech-industry-is-stepping-up-to-help-customers-cope-with-covid-19/
https://mobilegroove.com/how-the-martech-industry-is-stepping-up-to-help-customers-cope-with-covid-19/#respondWed, 29 Apr 2020 07:29:17 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20595These are trying times for marketing. Ad budgets are imploding and companies are cash-strapped. It’s natural for brands and agencies to want to dial back spend and hunker down until skies are clear again.

]]>These are trying times for marketing. Ad budgets are imploding and companies are cash-strapped. It’s natural for brands and agencies to want to dial back spend and hunker down until skies are clear again. But it’s precisely this knee-jerk reaction that can have an incredibly negative knock-on effect on brand image.

Reams of research show consumers are gravitating to brands that are willing to rise to that challenge, addressing the concerns and anxieties that are top of mind in the COVID-19 era. In fact, they are critical of brands that don’t. Take the phenomenal popularity of websites such as Didtheyhelp.com, where consumers can search by name to check if the brands they love or the celebrities they follow have done their part. Actions do indeed speak louder than words, and the actions companies take will no doubt earn them brand trust and influence purchase preference.

Those rewards, well deserved as they are, will only come to the companies that have the wherewithal to tell us about their good deeds. But getting a share of voice demands marketing and messaging campaigns that can break through the non-stop news and health updates that dominate the media. And that brings us full-circle and back to the pivotal importance of marketing—perhaps even more than before the pandemic—to win mindshare, heart share, and, ultimately, wallet share.

Put another way, companies that shave budgets for marketing or refrain from messaging may save money, but they’re wasting goodwill. A recent report highlights this disconnect and the brand damage it can cause. On one hand, consumers look to brands and businesses (particularly local companies at the frontlines of the crisis) to do their best to help us weather the storm. On the other hand, the report reveals, many company efforts languish under the radar, “little-known to the average consumer.” It’s a dynamic that turns up the pressure on brands and businesses to amplify their activities at a time when their budgets to do so are decimated.

Fortunately, some companies in the martech and adtech industries are stepping up with creative ways to do their part with tools and offers. These are solutions that customers hard hit by pandemic can use to amplify their contributions, seek advice, and prepare now to drive brand equity gains in the future.

Helping small business survive

For instance, Singular recently announced it is offering its growth marketing platform—used by brands like Doordash, Rovio, Stitch Fix, and Twitter—to all SMB marketers free for six months. The company isn’t stopping there, and will also provide advanced training from global experts on marketers’ toughest growth and management challenges to help marketers and their companies succeed during these trying times.

“It’s a really tough time for SMB marketers right now. Not only are they under a lot of scrutiny—they’re having to justify their work and protect their very existence,” Gadi Eliashiv, CEO & Co-founder, Singular, said in a statement. “By offering our unified marketing data and analytics platform for free for half a year, we hope that marketers hardest hit by COVID-19 will have the help they need to ride out and overcome the worst effects of the current downturn. They’ll gain a single source of truth for marketing performance; automated, aggregated access to all of their marketing data; and a platform that aligns all of their teams on the same tailored business metrics.”

But it’s not all about helping companies survive—it’s also about helping marketers prove their worth to companies that may be looking to make cuts.

“Now more than ever marketers need to prove they are driving value to their businesses as revenue centers, not cost centers,” Barbara Mighdoll, VP of Marketing, Singular, said in a statement. “They need to cut ineffective ad spend fast as consumer behavior changes and only invest in what’s working with a clear set of metrics that the entire business can align behind. Smart advertising investments will set them apart from the competition as businesses rapidly adapt to this new normal.”

Everyone lends a hand

Singular isn’t alone. Martech and ad tech companies of all shapes and sizes are looking at their products and finding ways to pitch in.

For its part, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), launched a central resource for information on the coronavirus pandemic as well as guidance for brands on how to navigate marketing this crisis: MMA Covid-19 Marketer Support Hub. “We wanted to curate a place in this crisis where marketers can easily find the most relevant, valuable information to address any specific area of concern, whether that’s advice on human resources, advertising data, or consumer trends,” Greg Stuart, global CEO of the MMA, said in a statement. “The Hub focuses on actionable and positive resources, which we feel mirrors the pioneering spirit of our Boards, members and MMA team.” The MMA is a non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain.

As the rules of engagement change, this resource could prove invaluable for marketers struggling to walk the fine line between bringing helpful marketing messages to consumers and appearing insensitive. [Disclosure: In addition to my consulting work, I serve as the Chief Content Officer of the MMA Germany, a position for which I am not paid.]

Meanwhile, Hootsuite announced it will provide free access to its Professional Plan for nonprofit organizations and small businesses, in an effort to help some of the organizations hit hardest by the crisis survive to see the other side.

Salesforce, on the other hand, is providing six months of free access to technology for emergency response teams, care management teams, health insurers, health systems, and other healthcare and life sciences organizations responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to donating $3 million to organizations helping to combat coronavirus, Adobe has announced a whole suite of initiatives for its various products, including:

Extended free trials and quick-start packages for commercial and government use of Adobe sign, which facilitates electronic signatures and document workflows for remote workers

A 90-day access pass for teachers to turn classroom content into eLearning tools with Adobe Captivate

Finding ways to help during these uncertain times isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s good business. In essence, this is not just a savvy user acquisition strategy—as at least some of the customers using these tools for free are bound to convert after the worst of the crisis has passed—but it’s also a retention strategy. Ensuring marketers communicate and drive customer connections increases their chances of survival, and multiplies opportunities to keep customers loyal to their brand when things get back to normal—whatever that may look like.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-the-martech-industry-is-stepping-up-to-help-customers-cope-with-covid-19/feed/0The time is right for AR: Inside Axel Springer’s immersive travel experiencehttps://mobilegroove.com/the-time-is-right-for-ar-inside-axel-springers-immersive-travel-experience/
https://mobilegroove.com/the-time-is-right-for-ar-inside-axel-springers-immersive-travel-experience/#respondTue, 28 Apr 2020 07:44:28 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20602Life in unprecedented times is propelling our collective experiences enhanced by Augmented Reality (AR) an unexpected boost. Companies are scrambling to provide audiences with meaningful ways to spend days stuck at home or add value for the over one billion students continuing their education from home, rather than school.

]]>Life in unprecedented times is propelling our collective experiences enhanced by Augmented Reality (AR) an unexpected boost. Companies are scrambling to provide audiences with meaningful ways to spend days stuck at home or add value for the over one billion students continuing their education from home, rather than school. People can tour colleges, national parks, and museums online. Google’s AR objects in search—announced last year—are finally getting their due as people bring virtual tigers, leopards and cats into their living rooms to keep a nation full of home-schoolers entertained.

Smart content companies are moving quickly to take advantage of the burgeoning interest. One of those companies is Axel Springer, which commands one of the biggest media portfolios in Europe. Made up of about 100 print titles, over 70 online sites, and more than 200 digital ventures worldwide, Axel Springer is a venerated German publisher. However Chris Krauss, senior product manager with spring_, a division of Axel Springer, told me that they have more than media ambitions. “We want to become a media tech company,” he said. With 400 employees, spring_ is an “enabler” to help all of Axel Springer’s brands adopt digital technologies to engage audiences and attract advertisers.

AR for the masses

A key part of executing that strategy is a partnership with HEADGEAR. The mobile-first agency for immersive B2C activations has expertise in building experiences for educational, entertaining, or visualization purposes. To make the experiences accessible to all consumers, not just those with VR goggles or AR glasses, the company has prioritized mobile AR for consumer adoption.

Together, Axel Springer and HEADGEAR are working to bring AR to the masses. Their first effort is a virtualtour of the California coast. It premiered in the print edition of the Welt am Sonntag (a Sunday newspaper belonging to the publisher Die Welt) in March. The tour lets people grounded by coronavirus take in the breathtaking view from Pacific Highway 1 at Carmel-by-the-Sea or check out the California sea lions near San Simeon.

It’s stunning. But, more importantly, it’s seamless. “You touch your screen to place this AR portal,” says Krauss. “Then literally walk through it and you find yourself in another place somewhere in the world.”

Empowering editors

The collaboration with HEADGEAR effectively allows editors to create AR portals – which appear in front of a user – that will transport a reader to a new location. In practice, any content team member with some experience in 3D modeling has the skillset to build a “simple doorway” into an AR world, according to Philip Wogart. He is co-founder of HEADGEAR and Executive Director DACH for the VR AR Association, an international organization designed to foster collaboration between companies and brands in VR and AR. “Once you have the portal, it’s no different than any other kind of filming, except that you need a 360 camera to do it.”

However, HEADGEAR’s tools aren’t just easy for publishers to use, they also simplify the experience for readers. It is built on top of the 8th Wall platform. So, readers don’t need to download an app to access the AR experience. Instead, audiences can access other worlds and rich experiences right through their browser.

This means “publishers can add Augmented Reality to any type of online advertising or any type of content really,” Wogart explains. “In this case, the Travel section of Sunday newspapers got enhanced with our portals. The print and desktop article included QR codes that readers could quickly scan with the smartphone camera app. Then they’d be automatically redirected to the AR browser experience.”

“WebAR is compatible with more devices than standalone apps (IKEA Places) and apps with embedded AR experiences (Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat) because the tech is not dependent upon iOS or Android versions but rather a JavaScript library for Chrome or Safari.” –Philip Wogart

Easy AR for everyone

This web-based experience is not just immersive, it’s also frictionless. Consumers don’t need an app. And brands and publishers don’t need to be convinced that AR is a new tool in their toolkit they can start using now to engage audiences. “A simple experience is the first step to reaching massive audiences,” Krauss explains. “So this first AR experience is kind of a test.

But it’s not a one-off.” He sees this as a tool they can provide to editorial departments across Axel Springer). It will allow them to create and run AR portals and experiences. This, in turn should make it easier for them to start their own series. It will also allow their readers to get immersed within the world of the article (360° video) all using just their smartphone.

In this scenario, the tool is part of a white-label package. “We customize it for the new customer and then they can create their own editorial AR content with 360-degree immersive video,” Krauss explains. The goal is to roll it out within Axel Springer. We’ll make it available to all the publishers and titles within the group.

Significantly, AR, which used to be a hard-sell to publishers, just got easier for Krauss and his team. “Within the first 24 hours of publishing the print and digital editions, we had over 20,000 views of 3 AR experiences,” he explains. “This is an impressive number alone. But we are also calculating a 30% conversion rate for those completing the entire experience. This is amazing as it’s not a tech-savvy audience we’re addressing here. It’s 40 and up. These readers haven’t been experimenting with AR the same ways teenagers have on Snap and other platforms.”

The potential for AR

This pilot, and the positive initial results, give the companies the support they need to pursue a mission that has been top of their agenda for years. It’s all about making AR exciting and inclusive for audiences and removing the friction that has slowed its move to the mainstream.

The implications here aren’t just editorial. Smart publishers can work with advertisers to create immersive experiences that will help keep brands top of mind during the coronavirus outbreak. It will also allow grateful readers to escape reality for a few minutes.

Just imagine if a tourism board or automotive company sponsored Axel Springer’s virtual drive. Well, that opportunity is exactly what Axel Springer’s in-house agency Brand Studio is offering to advertisers and their clients across all their publications using HEADGEAR’s AR tools. It is pretty compelling stuff. In fact, after the AR experience, consumers might find themselves inspired to book the first flight to San Francisco as soon as travel bans are lifted.

]]>Effective marketing and messaging demand a personal touch–but during a pandemic, it’s table stakes. However, showing empathy at scale requires marketers to strike a balance between automation and customization. Personal insurance shopper Jerry has cracked the code, delivering “individualized” communications catering to nearly 30 different–and fiercely personal–customer journeys. In this episode of our bi-weekly series Reimagine Growth our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with John Spottiswood, Chief Operating Officer at Jerry.ai, a free, automated agent who takes the pain and expense out of car and home ownership. John shares the strategy that allowed his company to achieve a 20% bump in conversions. He also talks about changes he has observed and best practices for marketing in the COVID-19 era.

We are in challenging and exciting times as marketers everywhere on the planet rewrite the playbook to drive positive results for their campaigns and their customers. To do both, we need guidance and good advice from marketers who freely share their expertise and experience. Reimagine Growth is a series equipping marketers to take charge of change in the marketplace — check out all the videos in this series here and subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep updated as new videos are added.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/personal-insurance-shopper-jerry-shares-essential-rules-to-automate-personalized-marketing/feed/0Why Augmented Reality Is More Accessible And Attractive For Mainstream Audiences Than Everhttps://mobilegroove.com/why-augmented-reality-is-more-accessible-and-attractive-for-mainstream-audiences-than-ever/
https://mobilegroove.com/why-augmented-reality-is-more-accessible-and-attractive-for-mainstream-audiences-than-ever/#respondThu, 16 Apr 2020 10:26:03 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20551Life in our unprecedented times is giving Augmented Reality (AR) an unexpected boost. Businesses and brands are getting in on the action, providing immersive experiences that everyone can access with their smartphone.
[READ ON & LISTEN IN}

]]>Life in our unprecedented times is giving Augmented Reality (AR) an unexpected boost. Businesses and brands are getting in on the action, providing immersive experiences that everyone can access with their smartphone. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Philip Wogart, co-founder of HEADGEAR and Executive Director DACH for the VR/AR Association, an international organization designed to foster collaboration between companies and brands in VR and AR. Philip shares the benefits of web-based AR and explains how simple it is for brands and businesses to provide consumers rich experiences right through their browser. He also walks us through his latest collaboration with Axel Springer, a leading European publisher (headquartered in Germany) with 100 print titles, over 70 online sites, and more than 200 digital ventures worldwide. The companies have teamed up to bring AR to the masses, starting with a virtual tour of California.

For more information on this project, the VR/AR Association is hosting a deep dive session from Chris & Philip on May 6 for its Travel & Tourism Online Meetup. Interested attendees may reach out to info@thevrara.com or directly to mail@headgear.io for an invitation.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/why-augmented-reality-is-more-accessible-and-attractive-for-mainstream-audiences-than-ever/feed/0The New Playtime: The Secret To MPL’s Massive Mobile Successhttps://mobilegroove.com/the-new-playtime-the-secret-to-mpls-massive-mobile-success/
https://mobilegroove.com/the-new-playtime-the-secret-to-mpls-massive-mobile-success/#respondThu, 16 Apr 2020 08:51:03 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20616Mobile gaming is emerging as the prime pastime as record numbers of consumers practice social distancing and use their downtime to discover new games or binge on favorites. Players are also congregating on esports platforms, digital safe spaces where they can compete on skill, and win big on prize money.

]]>Mobile gaming is emerging as the prime pastime as record numbers of consumers practice social distancing and use their downtime to discover new games or binge on favorites. Players are also congregating on esports platforms, digital safe spaces where they can compete on skill, and win big on prize money. It’s an irresistible combination at a time when the increase in our collective leisure time is matched only by our heightened anxiety about the spread of the coronavirus.

This dynamic has prompted Newzoo, a company providing games and esports analytics and market research, to update its revenue model and forecasts. Globally, the company says, the total esports audience will be just shy of 500 million players in 2020. Global esports revenues will cross the $1 billion mark for the first time.

Mobile is the main driver, accelerating the advance of esports in high-growth markets and regions. More importantly, mobile has also unleashed monetization methods, content formats, revenue streams (such as streaming and digital goods) and a new lineup of players to watch.

One company leading the pack is Mobile Premier League (MPL), India’s fastest growing esports platform. Backed by marquee investors, including Sequoia Capital, Go Ventures, and Times Internet, MPL has hit some impressive milestones since it launched in September 2018. Today, over 40 million registered users engage with nearly 40 games on the platform. The growing assortment includes chess, quiz, carrom, fantasy sports and rummy—all available on a single mobile app. (Users pay a registration fee to participate in games and tournaments on the MPL app.)

Better than the real thing

The platform got a massive boost in February when MPL announced the integration of the World Cricket Championship Rivals game from Nextwave Multimedia, a title that claims over 11 million downloads. The move was a smart one. It was also perfectly timed to cash in on the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket games, the richest and most popular T20 franchise league in the world. The tournament was originally set to be played from March 29-May 24. However, the games, like so many other sporting events, were canceled to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Fortunately, fans unable to attend the event in the physical world (which typically attracts an audience of over a billion people and pumps more than $11 billion into the Indian economy) don’t have to miss out on all the excitement.Sai Srinivas Kiran G, MPL Co-Founder and CEO, tells me in an interview that users are flocking to the MPL platform for the opportunity to experience the action and monetize their skills across the five cricket games currently offered on the MPL platform. In fact, from March 2 to March 18, MPL reports, the number of daily gameplays for the World Cricket Championship games rocketed 4x. [Disclosure: I interviewed Sai as the host of Reimagine Growth, a bi-weekly series on Mobile Presence, sponsored by CleverTap.]

Cricket fever around this time of the year was a big bonus for MPL last year as well. Sai (as he prefers to be called) tells me that cricket games as a group “beat seasonality” pulling in crowds before, during, and after the tournaments. One title in the winner’s circle is Cricket Clash, a real-time multiplayer cricket game created by indie game studio YesGnome. It drove nearly $15,000 (10lakhs INR) in entry fees when it was launched on the platform last November. That amount has increased more than 5x in three months to reach $75,000 (52lakhs INR). The game has since clocked over 7.25 million total gameplays.

But cricket isn’t the only crowd-pleaser. MPL has been quick to sign on more titles, providing people more ways to pass the time and earn some money. The company recently introduced quiz games on its platform, a gaming app subcategory that counts 2 million gameplays in just 3 weeks since launch.

Expansion plans and engagement lessons

The deals—and the gains—are coming fast and furious for MPL, allowing it to dominate as India’s fastest-growing platform. But MPL has its eye on a much bigger prize: expansion. Outside of India, MPL has established operations in Indonesia, dubbed the “fastest-growing market,” according to global app trends data from mobile measurement company Adjust. Since launching there in June 2019 MPL just crossed 3 million registered users, up from 2 million at the start of the year.

MPL Indonesia may have started out “burning money” to acquire users. However, it’s now making money thanks to an approach that inspires users to play to win, supported by a voucher system that sets a limit on withdrawals of the virtual in-app currency called Diamonds. If players choose to withdraw 1,000 Diamonds or more from their winnings, it comes with a 10% cut—which translates into 6% for taxes and 4% for MPL. The more users withdraw their winnings, the more money MPL makes. It’s the main reason why Joe Wadakethalakal, MPL Indonesia CEO, says business there exceeds expectations and forecasts. “We smashed our target for the quarter,” he said in a statement.

MPL is also expanding its platform offer, preparing to develop and distribute content and, ultimately, offer live streaming and chat. It’s an ambitious plan–but it’s also well within reach for Sai, who recently made the Entrepreneur 35under35, a list of the “35 most remarkable entrepreneurs of India who’ve aspired to greatness and are well on the way to achieving their goals.”

The first step in this direction is the addition of audio content, allowing users with limited data plans to connect with their favorite players. “It’s an experiment that worked, and now it’s a full-blown feature with a massive audience,” Sai says. The next weeks will be busy ones as MPL gears up to launch live streaming across the platform, giving pro-gamers another channel to reach and engage their followers and help enthusiasts improve their gaming skills.

It’s all part of a wider strategy to engage users spoilt for choice—and keep them coming back. “Games, like any form of content, come with an expiration date. People play for a while and then move on to the next game,” Sai explains.”We use CleverTap to see the early warning signs of when a user is starting to get bored and respond quickly with communications, at a very personalized level, to recommend other games or content to stop them from churning.”

It’s the same data-driven model that saves MPL investments the other direction, pinpointing player segments they need to let go, not pay to keep. “There’s always a risk of churn, but if a user is going to churn a month or so after they start playing, and after you pump all the money into enticing them to stay, then you’re much better off letting go of them sooner,” Sai explains.

He also advises marketers to segment users early on and build customer journeys to give users what they came to see in the first place. “It’s the simple things that have the biggest impact on conversion rates,” Sai says. “Making sure the ad you show and the game they see when they come onto the platform are the same, or knowing the channels that bring you your best users and optimizing for them, before you start a campaign and open the flood gates.”

A disconnect here could be a disaster, especially now when MPL, like many, is seeing a tidal wave of interest and new users, he adds. “Even if users are coming through in large numbers, they expect to be treated as individuals.” This approach will become even more critical when MPL—which recently signed Virat Kohli, Captain of the India Cricket Team—flips the switch on a massive media and branding campaign that will tap creative agencies Taproot Dentsu and Prime Focus Technologies to produce videos and commercials for digital platforms and TV.

Growth through optimization

Mobile gaming is breaking records. The past week saw users download a whopping 1.2 billion mobile games globally—amounting to the biggest week ever for app installs, according to app store intelligence provider App Annie. Its data for Q1 2020 is a string of superlatives: highest ever quarter for consumer spend ($23.4 billion in total), significant increase in app engagement (20% rise in daily time spent in-app in Q1 2020 compared to Q1 2019), and a phenomenal rise in downloads. In total consumers downloaded over 13 billion games in Q1 2020, accounting for 40% of the 31 billion apps downloaded over the period. Consumers also spent over $16.7 billion on mobile games in Q1 2020.

While Sai sees the opportunity to acquire record numbers of players for his platform, he is also cautious. “If you aren’t smart about who you get, and the user journey you plan for, it could cost you a lot in the long run.” His focus on retention dovetails with warnings from app industry and marketing experts that winning big at a time when users are bored is an edge that could shrink when social-distancing rules are less stringent. Mobile Dev Memo posits that, while the performance metrics may be rising into the stratosphere, marketers should think twice before doubling down on user acquisition. “Many of these users will not monetize like previous cohorts,” the blog concludes.

The path to growth may not be a walk in the park for games publishers. But gaming platforms have a sustainable edge, observes Karol Severin, an analyst with MIDiA Research, a boutique analysis, data and consulting firm focused on the business of entertainment, digital media and tech. In the face of a global pandemic, he places his bets on gaming to weather the storm. Gaming platforms have “the infrastructure to host all other forms of content and entertainment and become a prominent facilitator of cross-entertainment partnerships in our new era,” he writes in a research note.

Unlike many TV and entertainment companies that have had to put production on-hold, gaming platforms are running on all cylinders. They can harness the talent and reach of games studios to meet increased user demand for games and gaming content, a supply that will skyrocket as more publishers join platforms to reach and engage new audiences. Distribution is also a breeze. Self-isolation doesn’t pose an issue to gaming platforms. It presents an incredible opportunity for gaming platforms like MPL to be a major media platform and content provider in one.

]]>When your content features Serena Williams, Martin Scorsese, Dr. Jane Goodall, Natalie Portman, or Gordon Ramsey, it sells itself—or at least that’s what you’d expect, right? Well, it’s true to some degree, but that doesn’t mean the marketing team at Masterclass doesn’t have some challenges to overcome.

As part of our own Retention Masterclass series, John Koetsier and I talked to Head of Performance Lifecycle Marketing at MasterClass, Thomas Hopkins. The goal of MasterClass, says Thomas, is to unlock human potential. “And as people have a little bit more time because they’re not commuting, more at home, you know it allows people to have a little bit more time to kind of look at how they want to be spending that time,” says Thomas. Now, with people isolated at home by a global pandemic, screen time is increasing, and many people are turning to MasterClass.

Generally, for Thomas and his team, the issue is not finding people interested in their product, but connecting the right people with the right content. But right now, as companies everywhere do what they can to help users through COVID-19, MasterClass has asked itself the same question. Part of the answer is MC Live, where users can engage with instructors live and ask questions.

PALM: Performance and lifecycle marketing

MasterClass is also allowing members to gift free subscriptions to a “plus one.” But Thomas’ job is to think about the lifecycle. While getting users through the door is easy right now, Thomas also has to think about keeping those users around for the long haul.

“So, the biggest thing that we’re doing right now is in this time where people are consuming more content—we’ve opened up our breadth of instructors that we’re advertising and that we’re showing,” says Thomas. “We find that the engagement has really increased. So, before this period we had people watching a certain percentage of our trailers and now we’re seeing that amount of watch time increase. So people are engaging more and more and longer with our trailers.”

He adds, “So on our channels like Facebook, Google, and then as well as additional channels like TV and podcasts, we’ve actually increased the breadth of categories and instructors to really show all of them and allow everybody that might have an interest in education to see all of our trailers.”

Like many marketers, Thomas is finding that now is not the time to shrink your efforts—it pays to be bold and bring your product to the people who are looking for it.

Thomas calls this combination of performance and lifecycle marketing PALM. Part of nurturing the customer lifecycle, is encouraging the mindset of lifelong learners. “The other thing that we’re doing is making sure all of our content is available within our product, to allow people to move around in the product and look at things that are maybe a little bit different than a category that they thought they would be interested in, and because there’s actually a lot you can learn when you have this mindset of ‘I’m a lifelong learner.’”

By encouraging membership—rather than one-off purchases of a particular class—MasterClass allows users to explore different kinds of content and go down the rabbit hole of learning. With this model, tuning into a new class is risk free, and opens users’ minds to new instructors and subjects.

To learn more about how Thomas and the MasterClass team approach retention, listen to the entire interview here.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/masterclass-builds-value-for-subscribers-to-create-lifelong-learners/feed/0India’s Fastest-Growing Esports Platform Shares The Secret To Its Mobile Successhttps://mobilegroove.com/indias-fastest-growing-esports-platform-shares-the-secret-to-its-mobile-success/
https://mobilegroove.com/indias-fastest-growing-esports-platform-shares-the-secret-to-its-mobile-success/#respondThu, 09 Apr 2020 12:32:10 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20541Mobile gaming is breaking records, and the global esports audience will be just shy of 500 million players in 2020. It’s a dynamic that gets a boost as more users in self-isolation look for ways to pass the time and earn money.
[READ ON & LISTEN IN]

]]>Mobile gaming is breaking records, and the global esports audience will be just shy of 500 million players in 2020. It’s a dynamic that gets a boost as more users in self-isolation look for ways to pass the time and earn money. It also benefits esports mavericks like Mobile Premier League (MPL), India’s fastest growing esports platform. The company has hit some impressive milestones since it launched in September 2018, counting over 40 million registered users across nearly 40 games on the platform. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Sai Srinivas Kiran G, Co-Founder & CEO at Mobile Premier League, to talk about the moves the company (and avoided) as part of its strategy to stop churn before it starts. Sai, who recently made the Entrepreneur 35under35, a list of the “35 most remarkable entrepreneurs of India who’ve aspired to greatness and are well on the way to achieving their goals,” also shares his secrets for success and his plans to launch live streaming.

We are in challenging and exciting times as marketers everywhere on the planet rewrite the playbook to drive positive results for their campaigns and their customers. To do both, we need guidance and good advice from marketers who freely share their expertise and experience. Reimagine Growth is a series equipping marketers to take charge of change in the marketplace — check out all the videos in this series here and subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep updated as new videos are added.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/indias-fastest-growing-esports-platform-shares-the-secret-to-its-mobile-success/feed/0Beware of Funnel Vision: Use Data to Navigate the New Marketing Normshttps://mobilegroove.com/beware-of-funnel-vision-use-data-to-navigate-the-new-marketing-norms/
https://mobilegroove.com/beware-of-funnel-vision-use-data-to-navigate-the-new-marketing-norms/#respondFri, 03 Apr 2020 13:37:18 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20545You’ve heard it a thousand times: Fill the funnel, see what happens, and segment later. That strategy can fly or it can fail, but is it worth the risk—especially now, when everything marketers thought they knew about their customers is changing?
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]]>You’ve heard it a thousand times: Fill the funnel, see what happens, and segment later. That strategy can fly or it can fail, but is it worth the risk—especially now, when everything marketers thought they knew about their customers is changing?

As part of our Retention Masterclass series, John Koetsier and I talked to Rebecca Nackson, aveteran of iHeartMedia, Audible, and IBM—and the founder of Notable, a team of strategists, creatives, analysts, and project managers that will work with you to build your growth stack and engage your customers. Rebecca was turned off by the “fill the funnel” strategy long ago, and has set out to change the way we think about digital marketing.

“I, myself, handled marketing at a number of companies, and I’ve been across the spectrum in terms of size, and I’m old enough that when I started doing it, this whole thing called digital transformation started,” she says. “And one thing that I noticed between doing this at large companies that had lots of resources, doing it at newer companies that were digital-first, that you can have the right technology, you can have the right tools, but if your team and your tactics are not there, you’re not able to take advantage of those tools. “

Throw your instincts out the window

A Liftoff survey found that the three biggest concerns of marketers in 2020 were growth, retention and fraud—in that order. Rebecca says the answer lies in the data. You can’t rely on your gut, she says, but today you don’t have to. The advent of smartphones and the mass adoption of the devices meant marketers could know more about their customers than ever before, and the idea that you have to rely on instinct went out the window. And that’s especially true as marketers adjust to the new norm under coronavirus.

“I’m home right now. All of my shopping patterns are changing,” says Rebecca. “We’re looking at the data with our existing clients, and their work is bleeding into the evening, is bleeding into the weekend. They’re not commuting. They’re purchasing products in different ways.”

Everything you thought you knew is changing, and the only way to keep up with your users is to follow the data. How is that playing out?

“The first phase of the response to everything was, of course, to be conservative and to pause things and make sure that we’re sending out a message that’s sensitive,” says Rebecca. But that’s changing as people are home for longer, working on projects and figuring out how to get it all done without leaving the house.

“One thing that really surprised me in consulting is that I find that our clients are actually overly conservative in the messaging that they send,” Rebecca says. “You know, somebody will say to them, ‘I got two of your emails and that was annoying.’ And then suddenly there’s this whole directive [to scale back].” Rebecca warns against ignoring the data, especially on this front.

She adds, “So, if I was preaching to look at the data rather than just trusting your own instinct before, I definitely am going to be saying that now. And for us, I think a lot of people are going to be listening to that advice in a way that they weren’t before.”

Follow your customer’s lead

So, if you’re feeling confused and uncertain about how to navigate the turbulent waters of e-commerce in the age of coronavirus, there’s a simple answer to all your questions—and it’s in your data. For example, Rebecca says that, like a lot of New Yorkers, she’s eating out less now and has extra money to put toward other projects. Smart marketers will notice that she’s more engaged with emails and looking to accomplish home projects while sequestered at home.

Our collective behavior is changing, and the only way to know how to provide your users with what they need is to pay attention to what they’re telling you through the data.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/beware-of-funnel-vision-use-data-to-navigate-the-new-marketing-norms/feed/0Mastering The Art And Science Of Creatives In The Shifting Mobile Ad Markethttps://mobilegroove.com/mastering-the-art-and-science-of-creatives-in-the-shifting-mobile-ad-market/
https://mobilegroove.com/mastering-the-art-and-science-of-creatives-in-the-shifting-mobile-ad-market/#respondFri, 03 Apr 2020 08:17:46 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20513In a market where people crave personal experiences and bypass ads they feel miss the mark, the pressure is on marketers to deliver relevant and riveting ad creatives that engage consumers, rather than annoy them. It's a critical source of competitive advantage for marketers that want to activate and motivate audiences at scale.

]]>In a market where people crave personal experiences and bypass ads they feel miss the mark, the pressure is on marketers to deliver relevant and riveting ad creatives that engage consumers, rather than annoy them. It’s a critical source of competitive advantage for marketers that want to activate and motivate audiences at scale. Without a blueprint to follow, though, many marketers are struggling.

Making the effort to combine the power of human ingenuity with insights gleaned from data analytics has its rewards, according to research by McKinsey, the management consultancy. It estimates companies that successfully integrate creativity and data enjoy a “2x difference in revenue growth.” Brian Gregg, a senior partner at McKinsey told WARC in an interview, “it’s the difference between growing 10% and 5%—a massive difference.”

Achieving such positive outcomes depends on organizations finding new ways of fusing creativity and data, Marco Esposito, a digital and creative strategy consultant based in Berlin, tells me in an interview. “It’s about moving from silos to squads, laying the groundwork for close collaboration between performance marketers and creative directors to align campaigns with the needs, characteristics and cultures of its customers,” he says. Formerly the Senior Content Performance Manager at food delivery app Delivery Hero, Esposito recalls Delivery Hero was higher than many on the learning curve when it came to making the match between ad creatives and key audience segments. “However, the capabilities of analytics tools at the time limited the ability of our team to measure results accurately and iterate rapidly,” he recalls.

Fast forward, and more marketing teams are combining talent and tools to produce campaign creatives that are memorable and hit the metrics. “It’s an idea that is spreading like wildfire as companies realize ad creatives are the source of their competitive advantage,” Esposito says. It’s also why his clients are “obsessing about ways to develop more data-informed design and processes to measure results as rigorously as they do all other aspects of their campaign efforts and outcomes.”

But how do companies knit data and design together more effectively to acquire and activate audiences at scale? This is where Playstudios, a consumer gaming company headquartered in Las Vegas, is showing the way by cleverly combining data and design to deliver campaigns that resonate with audiences and hit performance targets.

Evaluating and elevating mobile ad creatives

The approach is powered by what Assaf Shalev, Head of Creative Marketing at Playstudios in Tel Aviv and a Mobile Hero recognized for his app marketing accomplishments, calls “performance creatives.” These mobile ad creatives are both data-informed and customer-focused, and Shalev tells me they succeed thanks to synchronization between his team and the performance marketing team led by fellow Mobile Hero Noga Laron, Playstudios Head of UA and Growth. [Disclosure: I regularly interview Mobile Heroes as the host of Mobile Presence, a weekly podcast for which I am not paid. Recently, Shalev and Laron were guests on The Art And Science Of Building A Performance Design Team, a webinar I moderated and for which I am not paid. My esteemed colleague and mobile growth marketer Sylvain Gauchet summarized key data and advice from the webinar in this detailed post.]

Noga Laron, Playstudios Head of UA and Growth, and Assaf Shalev, Playstudios Head of Creative Marketing, show how marketers can combine data and design to make compelling ad creatives. PLAYSTUDIOS

Excellence in design starts with access to data. “At Playstudios, design and data teams sit in the same room and, more importantly, have learned to speak the same language,” Laron explains. This means stripping out the geek-speak and relying on strong direction based on solid numbers. “A lot of designers can be like divas, so it was important to provide guidance based on analytics, not emotions.” Rather than dumb down the data, the UA team elevated the conversation, making it inclusive and intuitive. “We focused on educating the design team about the pre-install and post-install metrics they need to move with their creatives, and we shared how creatives were performing in a kind of leaderboard so they would know and be encouraged to discuss what is working and what isn’t,” Laron recalls. “Today I can’t imagine running UA without creative sitting at the same table and joining in sessions to discuss and digest what the data is telling us.”

So, how does she call the winning creative? “We run a new creative test each week with the same audience, platform and geo,” Laron explains. “We measure them against each other, rank them and introduce the best ones into active campaigns.” To measure performance, her team focuses on top-of-the-funnel metrics first—a list that includes CTR (click-through rate), CVR (conversion rate) and IPM (the number of app installs per thousand ad impressions). After a few days, the focus shifts to ROAS (return on ad spend) and payer rate. Her advice: “When you identify a high-performing creative, try reformatting it in all possible formats.”

Video ads are the crowd-pleasers

Video ads drive the highest engagement, chalking up CTRs that are up to 7.5x higher than display ads, according to a recent report by Smaato, a global in-app advertising platform. Supporting this, the 2020 Mobile Ad Creative Index from mobile app marketing and retargeting platform Liftoff, which tracks costs and conversion rates across four ad formats (banner, interstitial, native and video) across a variety of app categories, also declares video the crowd-pleaser. At the top of the funnel, video ads ($3.39) and interstitials ($3.38) tie on price, the report says. But deeper in the funnel, video is the bargain, “promising the highest conversion for an affordable cost.”

What’s more, video stands out as the ad creative that offers value across both Android and Apple iOS. “For both platforms, it combines the lowest costs with the highest engagement rates (Android – 4.9%, iOS – 6.2%). It’s a similar story for Playstudios, which has had massive success with short-form video ads. “Bursts of compelling animation combined with powerful sound gets users excited about the content they see and the app you offer,” Shalev says. His advice: “Start with a short, catchy loop (four to five seconds) to find out what resonates with your audience.”

Focus on results, and be open to experimentation. Video offers data and design teams a rich palette of options and opportunities, increasing the freedom to experiment and the chances to succeed, Shalev explains. “Don’t give up if the video alone doesn’t hit the metrics; add narration or subtitles. Or you can change the background music or remove it altogether.”

Iterate, test and learn. For Shalev, it’s the way design should be. “You put a creative out there, the numbers tell you how well or badly it performs, and then you make the changes that get you to where you need to go.” He compares the process to building a staircase. “Every time you put a creative out there it’s like adding another step. If the data tells you a creative doesn’t perform, remove that step and replace it with another until you can climb the stairs.”

Changing times mean shifting opportunities

“Test and learn” is solid advice given the explosion in time spent on mobile and in-app. These are digital safe spaces where brands and marketers can reach and engage (and activate) immense audiences—provided they combine data and analytics properly to personalize campaigns at scale.

Data from the State of Mobile 2020 report published by app store intelligence provider App Annie just prior to the spread of COVID-19 reveals the number of hours spent on mobile devices already far exceeds analyst expectations. Overall, the report says, consumers averaged 3 hours and 40 minutes on mobile in 2019, up 35% since 2017. Sensing a business opportunity, brands and marketers continue to shift massive budgets to mobile, a channel that has accounted for more than half of total digital ad spend for years now. Meanwhile, digital creative and communications agency Dentsu Aegis Network forecasts mobile ad spend will grow by 17.6% this year to take a 77.5% share of total digital ad spend with further growth powered by the potential of 5G. Fortunately, it’s money well spent. A whopping 90% of smartphone users recall seeing mobile ads within the first few days the ad was originally shown.

Opportunity seekers will want to focus on in-app advertising, a channel set to triple, surging from $72 billion in 2016 to reach a projected high of $201 billion in 2021. At a time when consumer activity is focused at home, app-based messaging seems like a sure winner. Eric Seufert, a strategy consultant in the mobile sector and the editor of Mobile Dev Memo, cautions, however, that “boosts in engagement are not evenly distributed” across the entire app category. In the case of mobile gaming apps, for example, user time and attention is still “concentrated in a handful of games.” In fact, many major mobile games publishers are actually seeing decreased engagement.

The message to marketers is clear: Make sure data and design work together to strike a chord with consumers. Engagement of lasting value is born of a combination of creative art and analytic science. Marketers that align teams for collaboration now will continue to see the rewards when today’s troubled times are in the rearview mirror.

]]>It’s no secret that COVID-19 has disrupted business as usual across the physical world and the digital realm. A recent analysis from app store intelligence AppAnnie shows that–even though they’re our digital safe places–apps have not escaped the virus’s reach. Some apps – such as travel apps, rideshare apps, and restaurant apps–have seen a decline. However, game apps, streaming apps, health and fitness apps, food delivery apps, and others have seen a rise in use and activity as a global and growing user base adjusts to staying at home 24/7. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with App Annie’s Amir Ghodrati, Director, Market Insights, and Lexi Sydow, Senior Market Insights Manage, to discuss the impact of the coronavirus on key app verticals. They also share some of the high-growth apps showing up in their data and weigh in on the do’s and don’ts app marketers should follow to drive positive results for campaigns and consumers in our unprecedented times.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-covid-19-impacts-consumer-mobile-app-use-time-spent-and-pastime-preferences/feed/0How To Be A Magnetic Brandhttps://mobilegroove.com/key-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-charles-orlando-head-of-global-communications-brand-at-clevertap/
https://mobilegroove.com/key-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-charles-orlando-head-of-global-communications-brand-at-clevertap/#respondTue, 31 Mar 2020 07:29:56 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20490Want to hear something sobering? Some marketers spend upwards of $100,000 a day on paid customer acquisition. Meanwhile, new research shows that if 70% of brands were to disappear consumers wouldn’t care. The truth is, it’s not about how much money you spend, it’s about how magnetic you are—how well you can capture and hold your audience’s interest.
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]]>Want to hear something sobering? Some marketers spend upwards of $100,000 a day on paid customer acquisition. Meanwhile, new research shows that if 70% of brands were to disappear consumers wouldn’t care. The truth is, it’s not about how much money you spend, it’s about how magnetic you are—how well you can capture and hold your audience’s interest.

We sat down with Charles Orlando, head of brand at CleverTap, to talk about what it means to be magnetic and why some of the old marketing standards just aren’t enough anymore.

Defining magnetic brands

“Magnetism is by definition something that puts two disperate things together,” says Charles, but he’s hesitant to get too deep into these new ideas before looking back at older ones. “If you look at marketing professionals today who specialize in bringing brands to market and creating that type of connection with consumers, it’s usually driven in one of two ways,” he says.

Engagement—Engagement is what a brand does to introduce itself to a potential customer, and to try to build a connection and some level of relationship. But it’s a one-way interaction between the brand and the potential customer.

Retention—Retention is exactly the opposite, where you have a customer who has either mentally, physically, psychologically, or financially already disconnected from that relationship and the brand says, “Wait, wait, before you go, now that you’re already finished with us, please come back. I’ve got 20% off.”

Charles says neither of these one-way situations are conducive to building a solid, connected, mutual relationship.

“What I’m suggesting, and what research has shown us, is that a magnetic relationship is based on mutual attraction. A brand sets up an environment that is based on not only what they think the customer wants, but what the customer is actually showing them they want on a daily basis.”

The power of paying attention

When it comes to being magnetic the key is to pay attention. Charles says your customers are constantly showing you what they want.

“Whether that’s online, offline, something in a physical brick and mortar store, or just through a community interaction. Maybe it’s on social, maybe it’s on their website,” says Charles. “Wherever that interaction takes place it’s a genuine, authentic relationship built on a brand creating that environment and a customer saying, ‘You know what? Thank you for paying attention to me, you know exactly what I’m looking for, let me join you in this discussion.’”

All of this information allows brands to build a personalized experience that customers can’t resist, and a relationship that keeps them loyal and coming back for more. But it is possible to overestimate the control you have over this relationship.

“Ultimately, the brand relationship is really out of that brand’s control,” Charles says. “It’s all built on a combination of emotional engagement and perception on the part of the entire market. So, as a brand, you can only go so far to create a situation where someone wants to engage you.”

To learn more about how to create a magnetic brand, read the full transcript below.

]]>App market intelligence reports show personal finance apps, our “go-to” app category to manage our daily lives, are poised for massive growth, chalking up more than a 1 trillion sessions globally in 2019 alone. But heightened interest doesn’t automatically result in lasting loyalty. Achieving that requires companies to reduce friction in the user journey starting with education and onboarding to help users get the most value out of the app experience. Learn valuable lessons we can apply to all app marketing when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Hernando Rubio Dacosta, CEO & Co-Founder of MOVii, a company leading a digital payments revolution in Colombia. Hernando shares how he architected omnichannel campaigns to educate and engage users throughout the onboarding process, a strategy that saw 63% of users who didn’t finish the onboarding came back to complete it. He also speaks candidly about his personal mission to minimize barriers to financial inclusion and contribute to social development in Colombia. “You run as fast as the dog that is chasing you,” is his mantra as he seeks to push boundaries and transform his society. Inspiring words in our unprecedented times, so listen in and absorb the positive energy.

We are in challenging and exciting times as marketers everywhere on the planet rewrite the playbook to drive positive results for their campaigns and their customers. To do both, we need guidance and good advice from marketers who freely share their expertise and experience. Reimagine Growth is a series equipping marketers to take charge of change in the marketplace — check out all the videos in this series here and subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep updated as new videos are added.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-movii-makes-personal-financial-services-more-personal-and-inclusive/feed/04 Tips To Become A Retention Superstarhttps://mobilegroove.com/key-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-jessy-hanley-vp-marketing-intuit/
https://mobilegroove.com/key-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-jessy-hanley-vp-marketing-intuit/#respondMon, 23 Mar 2020 13:50:43 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20433Retention is the new growth. I’ve said it before and will say it again—but that’ even more true among highly competitive apps for on-demand services.
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]]>Retention is the new growth. I’ve said it before and will say it again—but that’ even more true among highly competitive apps for on-demand services. For every Uber or Wag there is a Lyft or a Rover looking to poach customers. And in this sector customer loyalty is far more important than in, say, gaming, where people tend to have several games they return to regularly. With all of this in mind, it’s clear that having a retention strategy in place is even more important for these apps.

That’s why we sat down with Jessy Hanley—former VP marketing at Wag and director of CRM at Uber—to talk about her expertise in retaining customers. As part of our Mobile Presence Masterclass series, Jessy shared a few of her best tips with me.

Retention isn’t just marketing’s job

While marketing may be the team most focused on retention metrics but if your approach isn’t holistic, you’re bound to struggle—maybe even fail. “I mean it’s really thinking about the entire customer journey and making sure that one, the organization is set up to support that journey and that everybody feels responsible and accountable for retention, because no one team can solve the problem,” says Jessy.

Retention is a team effort and you’ll need to involve everyone from everyone from product developers to customer support, from community to marketing. “Everybody’s really very much involved if you want to do it well,” advises Jessy.

Retention is a relationship

You have to wine and dine your users before you can invite them back to your place! Maybe that’s taking the metaphor a bit far, but Jessy say, “I think the real trick is to think about retention as a relationship.”

She adds, “You don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, and so you have to think about what do you want to tell people? How do you want to work with them? How do you make sure that they are deepening their relationship with you over time? And that really requires some real tough conversations within your organization about what really matters.”

Retention goals are as individualized as your users

Everyone wants to know what the “north star” of retention is. What numbers should you be looking for? The truth is, it’s complicated—and specific to each company. Have you been around for a long time? Then your goal should be to make your tenured customers feel valued instead of worrying too much about bringing in new users.

You can have too much segmentation

When it comes to retention, you have to start with segmentation but it’s easy to look at your user base and go hog wild with segmentation, breaking out groups for every little demographic or action. But you can have too much of a good thing.

“So, I tend to believe in trying to stick around about six main segments,” says Jessy. Beyond that, she thinks it’s too hard to really personalize messages in a meaningful way for each segment. “You also need to see, do these segments actually behave differently? Because sometimes your segment that is your tenured customer, or your high value customer, actually behaves very similar to another segment.”

Want to take a deeper dive into the best practices for retention, check out the transcript below.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/key-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-jessy-hanley-vp-marketing-intuit/feed/0Empowering Women To Fix The Broken Runghttps://mobilegroove.com/empowering-women-to-fix-the-broken-rung/
https://mobilegroove.com/empowering-women-to-fix-the-broken-rung/#respondFri, 20 Mar 2020 10:48:29 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20501A rising tide lifts all boats, and when it comes to ensuring women's representation, the impact is a tidal wave of innovative perspectives that help business and society flourish. For corporations, efforts to improve leadership diversity are measurably linked with profitability and value creation.

]]>A rising tide lifts all boats, and when it comes to ensuring women’s representation, the impact is a tidal wave of innovative perspectives that help business and society flourish. For corporations, efforts to improve leadership diversity are measurably linked with profitability and value creation. Clearly, everyone has a stake in the advancement of women. Counterintuitively, efforts to increase the percentage of women in senior leadership may mask the real reason men continue to outnumber women at the top.

Women in the Workplace, a 2019 study from consulting firm McKinsey and Company and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s non-profit Lean In, observes that the glass ceiling, the invisible and systemic barrier that prevents women from rising to the top, “is not the biggest obstacle to women’s progression.” The real problem is the talent pipeline—or rather the lack of one. “And without fundamental changes early in the pipeline,” the study warns that “gains in women’s representation will ultimately stall.”

Progress is constrained by what the study has named the “broken rung.” The first step on the ladder to senior leadership is the move from an entry-level position to manager. Missing that first, most difficult, step is more than a setback for individual women. It starves companies of amazing talent, deprives them of diverse thought and threatens to push gender parity out of reach. Fixing it, the study urges, will “set off a positive chain reaction across the entire pipeline.

Fueling the pipeline requires reframing the importance of diversity and inclusion. It demands the commitment of companies to develop talented women from the entry level up. But it also calls for women to empower each other. As fellow Forbes contributor Keemia Ferasat, Founder and CEO of Style Salute, a digital media company focused on the positive power of women, points out in her latest post: “None of us are operating in a silo. Advancing women in our own communities and offices and providing opportunities for them to reach their potential is important both for attaining gender equality and also for meeting a wide range of international development goals.”

Women have found unique and effective ways to help one another, lifting each other up and paving new pathways to success. I draw from interviews with four remarkable women in marketing (including two managers whose expertise in mobile app marketing has earned them the title Mobile Hero) to shine a light on best practices all women can follow to work together and advocate for each other.

#1 Find your voice and amplify others.

Melissa Lertsmitivanta, Marketing Director REALTOR.COM

Melissa Lertsmitivanta was lucky enough to have mentors early in her career. It gave her a safe space to think boldly and develop new perspectives that have had a positive influence on her personal leadership style. She’s built a career in various marketing roles over the last decade, previously at Electronic Arts and today, as Marketing Director at realtor.com, a national real estate portal that connects real estate professionals with serious home buyers, renters and sellers, Lertsmitivanta is giving back. She participates in mentoring programs and shares her knowledge and insights with junior marketers. She also draws from her background – which includes a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Social Behavior and an MBA – to build confidence in her mentees. “It’s about helping others step outside their comfort zone to find their voice and be proactive about sharing insights to foster collaboration,” she says.

Mentoring helps build a strong pipeline of young women. “But it also ensures there are strong and diverse opinions at the table able to entertain new perspectives and see new opportunities,” Lertsmitivanta explains. To encourage productive dialog between product, marketing and engineering and drive positive impact for the company Lertsmitivanta also regularly hosts what she calls “mobile marketing 101” sessions. “When everyone has a deeper understanding of what they do, what everyone else does and how their work contributes to real results, it fosters a more collaborative and inclusive environment instead of one where each team just works in silos,” she says. The outcome is a virtuous cycle of gender-diverse empowerment and some fresh perspectives that even surprised Lertsmitivanta. She recalls an instance where marketing walked through the types of reporting teams rely on to make budget and campaign decisions, providing the data engineering team the input it needed to build a new dashboard and automate key processes. Her advice: “Lead by example and empower others to do the same.” Encouraging a culture of inclusion exposes every individual to fresh perspectives, new ideas and creative approaches that benefit the team and the organization.

#2 Encourage the best in yourself and others.

Bruna Amaya, Head of Marketing HURB

At the age of 24, Bruna Amaya wouldn’t ordinarily be focused on coaching colleagues and finding ways she can build a strong pipeline of talent. But her determination to do both is positively influenced by her meteoric rise from intern to Head of Marketing at Hurb, a Brazil-based company providing an online platform that enables travelers to find and reserve accommodation and activities. “It’s positive proof of what women can achieve when they have the opportunity to develop strong management experience early in their careers,” Amaya explains. “Moving up the ladder can be hard for women, but it’s even harder for young women.” Fortunately, Amaya also had support from her mentor João Ricardo Mendes, Hurb’s Founder and CEO.

Empowered to reach her potential, Amaya has also paved the way for new marketing approaches at Hurb. Rather than copy the campaigns that worked on the web to acquire users for the mobile app, Amaya pushed her team to adopt a new mindset and an innovative strategy to reach and engage mobile-first audiences. The results were off the charts. “Retention improved rapidly, and the user base grew by 3X,” she recalls. “It’s critical to be curious and never stop asking questions—and encourage everyone on your team to do the same.” Her advice to young women reaching for the top: borrow a page from a recent article in the Harvard Business Review that explains the difference between managers and great managers. Don’t play checkers and treat your team as if they are interchangeable uniform pieces destined to all move in the same direction. Instead, play chess. “Get to know and value the unique abilities of the diverse talents in your team, and encourage each individual to excel and achieve their potential.”

#3 Broaden your horizons with strategic networking.

Dini Mehta, Chief Revenue Officer LATTICE

A career path that spans science, sales and now responsibility for all activities that generate revenue at her company have exposed Dini Mehta to diverse ideas and the importance of creating an environment where they flourish. As Chief Revenue Officer of Lattice, a people management platform that helps HR leaders build high-performing teams, Mehta is positioned to make a contribution that elevates the position of people of all backgrounds, both in her company and in the workforce at large. “Lattice is hoping to help bridge the gap between HR, managers and employees to help foster a strong culture where employees can feel empowered” Mehta explains. “Startups and fast-growth companies understand this notion that investing in your people is a critical part of investing in your business. This is a core part of our go-to-market strategy that we believe enables companies—and their employees—to reach their potential.”

Investing in people is baked into Lattice’s corporate DNA—so much so that the company recently launched a fund to do it. The Invest In Your People Fund supports Lattice employees who go on to start their own companies. According to a company blog post, employees who start a new company within 12 months of leaving are eligible for an investment of “up to $100,000 either at a $5 million valuation or at the terms of a seed round you are raising, whichever is higher.”

Mehta also encourages her team and the women she mentors within the Lattice Ladies Employee Resource Group, a critical piece of her organization’s diversity and inclusion strategy, to take a strategic approach to networking. She leads by example, setting a goal of “meeting with at least two female leaders each month to learn from their story.” It’s about forming close connections with women who have been there, done that—and it’s the exchange that has helped Mehta frame her own stretch goals. “It forces you to get out of your comfort zone and it broadens your horizons,” she says. Her advice: “Reach out to women leaders on LinkedIn and suggest a quick Zoom coffee call, or the equivalent, and come prepared with a list of four questions you’d like to walk through.” Also, reach out beyond direct connections to get out of your inner-circle echo chamber. “Networking helps bridge the gap between diverse and non-diverse, helping you appreciate a variety of perspectives.”

#4 Focus on mutual benefit, not bonding.

Jennifer Burrington, SVP of Global Sales INTERCEPTD

Networking helps women unlock their potential and bring other women up the rungs. But recent research suggests that significant differences in how women cultivate relationships—and their expectations about the outcomes—may be the biggest bias women face on the path to success. Broadly speaking, the research states, men tend to be more tactical, building gender-diverse networks to get them to a specific goal, such as gathering information about a specific employer they might be interested in or a new direction they might want to pursue. Women, on the other hand, tend to maintain a female-dominated inner circle of contacts for support, which can feel socially secure but fail to generate key opportunities.

It’s a trait that can be traced to the cultural and systemic hurdles women face as they strive to stand up for themselves and others, observes Jennifer Burrington, SVP of Global Sales at mobile marketing fraud detection company Interceptd. “To bridge the gender inequality gap, women build circles of trust to find their voices and show they have each other’s backs,” Burrington explains. After two decades in a variety of roles in marketing and sales leadership at companies including Sprint, Electronic Arts, Conversant and multiple ad-tech start-ups, Burrington has learned to appreciate “the huge difference between leaning on women for support and relying on every woman to lift you up.” It’s about focusing efforts on developing business relationships, not friendships, she says. “You can’t count on every woman to help you reach your own potential, but you can be a role model through your actions to collectively help all women move the needle together.”

Women may have been socialized into thinking that advancing women in organizations is a zero-sum game, Burrington explains. But women have to learn to “shut out this superficial noise” that drains their collective energy and weakens their combined impact. “If other women aren’t standing up for you, stand up for yourself and advocate for yourself,” Burrington says. But never harbor resentment. “Instead, think daily about the ways you can extend an olive branch and be a good representative of women in business.” Why? Because investing in women can impact every individual and every company. “An inclusive environment results in a more satisfied workforce and a greater potential for increased productivity and profits,” Burrington explains. And she’s not alone. Reams of recent research reveals a significant correlation between female leadership and company profitability. Her advice: Take the high road and help women over the hurdles. “Foster healthy, open and inclusive conversations, not exclusive ones.”

Resourceful, innovative and generous women like these are creating a culture of encouragement for the next generation of female leadership. Thanks to their efforts, the broken rung may soon cease to block women’s advancement. In fact, we may need to retire the ladder metaphor completely, and replace it with a staircase that women can climb side by side, together.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/empowering-women-to-fix-the-broken-rung/feed/0Smart Advice For Young Marketers Eager To Move Up The Ladder—And Lift Othershttps://mobilegroove.com/smart-advice-for-young-marketers-eager-to-move-up-the-ladder-and-lift-others/
https://mobilegroove.com/smart-advice-for-young-marketers-eager-to-move-up-the-ladder-and-lift-others/#respondThu, 19 Mar 2020 17:18:31 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20451To mark the annually celebrated Women’s History Month in March, we raise awareness around young women in marketing and highlight how they are moving up the ladder–paving the way for others to follow. The focus is on building strong leadership traits and a gender-diverse pipeline of talent when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Bruna Amaya, a Mobile Hero recognized for her marketing expertise.
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]]>To mark the annually celebrated Women’s History Month in March, we raise awareness around young women in marketing and highlight how they are moving up the ladder–paving the way for others to follow. The focus is on building strong leadership traits and a gender-diverse pipeline of talent when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Bruna Amaya, a Mobile Hero recognized for her marketing expertise. She shares her meteoric rise from intern to Head of Marketing at Hurb, a Brazil-based company providing an online platform that enables travelers to find and reserve accommodation and activities. She also recounts how she encouraged her team to drive a new approach to mobile app marketing—and one that rocketed retention and grew the total user base by 3X.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/smart-advice-for-young-marketers-eager-to-move-up-the-ladder-and-lift-others/feed/0The World Is Charged Up For AI – And Here Is What Will Change In Marketinghttps://mobilegroove.com/the-world-is-charged-up-for-ai-and-here-is-what-will-change-in-marketing/
https://mobilegroove.com/the-world-is-charged-up-for-ai-and-here-is-what-will-change-in-marketing/#respondThu, 12 Mar 2020 17:14:51 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20443If you think that AI is going to make your marketing job obsolete, think again. AI may just make your job (and many aspects of your existence) completely manageable and utterly exciting for the very first time.
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]]>If you think that AI is going to make your marketing job obsolete, think again. AI may just make your job (and many aspects of your existence) completely manageable and utterly exciting for the very first time. This is the view of Byron Reese, author of The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity, which explores how AI, robotics, automation and more are combining to unlock unlimited opportunities and make the impossible possible. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Reese–the CEO and publisher of the technology research company GigaOm, the founder of several high-tech companies and the owner of several patents–to discuss the impact of AI and robotics on the future marketer. Reese brings the topic to life with inspiring examples and truthful scenarios, using human history and nature as a lens to frame how our age, the Fourth Age, can play out and potentially alter everything for the better.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/the-world-is-charged-up-for-ai-and-here-is-what-will-change-in-marketing/feed/0The Three Must-Measure Metrics For Retention Successhttps://mobilegroove.com/three-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-sunil-thomas-ceo-and-co-founder-of-clevertap/
https://mobilegroove.com/three-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-sunil-thomas-ceo-and-co-founder-of-clevertap/#respondThu, 05 Mar 2020 12:23:06 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20406John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz sat down with Sunil Thomas, CEO and Co-founder of CleverTap—who has helped solve retention for more than 8,000 apps—to talk about the keys to improving app retention and the metrics you need to measure to know if your efforts are effective.
[READ ON & WATCH NOW]

]]>$60 billion. That’s how much will be spent on acquiring new mobile users this year according to Apps Flyer. Meanwhile, day one retention is at just 25.2%. Do the math and that means mobile marketers a potentially $40 or $50 billion is going up in smoke nearly as soon as its spent. But as our Mobile presence hosts point out, if you spent just a fraction of those billions actually fixing retention and building the kind of brand experience that would attract new organic customers, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.

The keys to app retention

John Koetsier and I sat down with Sunil Thomas, CEO and Co-founder of CleverTap—who has helped solve retention for more than 8,000 apps—to talk about the keys to improving app retention and the metrics you need to measure to know if your efforts are effective.

Make your app “magnetic”

Retaining users is all about creating a user experience that is magnetic—keeping users coming back day after day. Sunil says it’s all about taking action—two very specific actions:

Omni-channel messaging—You have to be proactive about bringing users back to your app, especially new users who have not yet formed a habit and made your product a daily destination. Sunil says, “We allow our customers to reach out to their users over 12 or 13 channels, push notifications, in-app messages, app inboxes, WhatsApp for business, text messages and so on.”

Personalization—All marketers know that personalization is the name of the game in the digital age. In fact, users expect a personalized experience as part of the agreement to give you their data. “There’s a first-time user, there’s a champion user, there is a loyal customer,” says Sunil. And you have to treat each of them differently, every time they come into the app (or when reaching out to them through your omni-channel messaging).

Keep an eye on RFM

If you want to make the most of your messaging and personalization efforts, you must pay attention RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) and target the right users. As Sunil says, “it’s about understanding your users and really segmenting them into small buckets.”

Sunil describes CleverTap’s approach as an “automated segmentation methodology that allows users to break their user base into 10 unique segments based on three key metrics: recency, frequency, and monetary. On one end of the spectrum “are your champion users. These are the most recent, most frequent, and have the most monetary value typically.” On the other end are your hibernating users. “And the key here is to automate your life cycle management so that as people fall up and down these spectrums, they get the right experience that you’ve designed,” says Sunil.

The 3 must-measure metrics

No matter what vertical you are in, CleverTap recommends paying close attention to three metrics as part of measuring the effectiveness of your retention efforts:

Retention rate—The speed of your business will determine whether you’re interested in a daily, weekly, or month retention rate but it’s a number you need to track.

Conversion rate—“Every app, every business really has three to five key conversion rates that makes or breaks their business,” says Sunil. Whether you’re concerned with tracking first install to first purchase, or converting free users to paid subscribers, but you need to be focused on the conversions that matter to you.

Customer lifetime value (LTV)—This metric is your “North Star,” according to Sunil. “Now the problem with lifetime value is that it’s a little bit of a lagging indicator as compared to the first two,” he says, but it’s just as important to track.

Success by the numbers

If you put in the work, and heed the advice of experts like Sunil, you can expect to see dramatic results. Sunil says he often sees as much as 50% improvement in retention rates, conversions, and LTV within 12 months of taking action. With billions of dollars at stake, it’s time to get your strategy in place and start keeping the users you spent so much to acquire.

To take a deeper dive into our Retention Masterclass, check out the transcript below.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/three-takeaways-from-retention-masterclass-with-sunil-thomas-ceo-and-co-founder-of-clevertap/feed/0Mastering Individualized Engagement To Make Your Brand “Magnetic”https://mobilegroove.com/mastering-individualized-engagement-to-make-your-brand-magnetic/
https://mobilegroove.com/mastering-individualized-engagement-to-make-your-brand-magnetic/#respondThu, 05 Mar 2020 12:08:02 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20387Individualized engagement is becoming integral to marketing success. A brand’s power of perception has shifted from the business to the individual, and marketers are feeling the pressure to ensure consistency across all the channels their brand is experienced—digital, in-app, and in the real world.
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]]>Individualized engagement is becoming integral to marketing success. A brand’s power of perception has shifted from the business to the individual, and marketers are feeling the pressure to ensure consistency across all the channels their brand is experienced—digital, in-app, and in the real world. Engagement and retention are critical and success is dependent on delivering campaigns and communications that are relevant, contextual, and timely, allowing a genuine, magnetic interaction that drives customer connection, reduces friction, and increases brand affinity.

This process can be automated, allowing marketers to define and action audience segments in real-time based not only on customer behavior but also—if you have the right solution working for you—customer intent. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Sunil Thomas, co-founder, and CEO of CleverTap, a leading customer engagement and retention platform, to discuss how marketers can more effectively wield retention marketing to drive positive results. Sunil also outlines how you can build a truly magnetic brand that attracts customers—and keeps them coming back.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/mastering-individualized-engagement-to-make-your-brand-magnetic/feed/0Addressing Consumers On-The-Move With Digital Out-Of-Home Advertisinghttps://mobilegroove.com/addressing-consumers-on-the-move-with-digital-out-of-home-advertising/
https://mobilegroove.com/addressing-consumers-on-the-move-with-digital-out-of-home-advertising/#respondFri, 28 Feb 2020 13:22:16 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20380Programmatic opens up new inventory and new opportunities in Out-Of-Home (OOH) advertising, paving the way for marketers who leverage spatial, audience and movement data to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. Our host Peggy Anne Salz and Tom Laband, Co-Founder & CEO of adsquare, discuss how a data-driven approach to OOH (activated by mobile devices or even connected cars) enhances the ability of brands to drive customer connection and contextual relevance through outdoor campaigns.
[READ ON & LISTEN IN]

]]>Programmatic opens up new inventory and new opportunities in Out-Of-Home (OOH) advertising, paving the way for marketers who leverage spatial, audience and movement data to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. Our host Peggy Anne Salz and Tom Laband, Co-Founder & CEO of adsquare, discuss how a data-driven approach to OOH (activated by mobile devices or even connected cars) enhances the ability of brands to drive customer connection and contextual relevance through outdoor campaigns. Tom shares how adsquare, the real-time data exchange, is helping brands and media agencies quickly and efficiently plan, activate and measure the effectiveness of their digital OOH campaigns. He also gives us his pick of best practices and ways you can get personal in advertising in a privacy-friendly way.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/addressing-consumers-on-the-move-with-digital-out-of-home-advertising/feed/0Grammarly Embraces Empathy Marketing To Boost Resultshttps://mobilegroove.com/grammarly-embraces-empathy-marketing-to-boost-results/
https://mobilegroove.com/grammarly-embraces-empathy-marketing-to-boost-results/#respondThu, 20 Feb 2020 12:07:44 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20365In a connected age where consumers crave authenticity, companies must make every effort, using everything they know about their audience, to deliver experiences that address needs, anticipate interests or simply go the distance to make their life better. We get a crash course in data-driven “Empathy Marketing” when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Chy Seng, Head of Mobile Growth at Grammarly.
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]]>In a connected age where consumers crave authenticity, companies must make every effort, using everything they know about their audience, to deliver experiences that address needs, anticipate interests or simply go the distance to make their life better. We get a crash course in data-driven “Empathy Marketing” when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Chy Seng, Head of Mobile Growth at Grammarly, a digital writing assistant (via both web and apps) that helps people write more clearly and effectively. Chy, a Mobile Hero recognized for his user acquisition expertise and accomplishments, discusses the role of creativity in creating trust and the metrics that tell marketers when they’ve struck a positive chord with their audience.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/grammarly-embraces-empathy-marketing-to-boost-results/feed/0The Data is in the Details When it Comes to Testing Ad Creativehttps://mobilegroove.com/the-data-is-in-the-details-when-it-comes-to-testing-ad-creative/
https://mobilegroove.com/the-data-is-in-the-details-when-it-comes-to-testing-ad-creative/#respondThu, 13 Feb 2020 11:53:12 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20359The Data is in the Details When it Comes to Testing Ad Creative. Live from Mobile Growth Summit in San Francisco, our host Peggy Anne Salz checks in with Phil Shpilberg, President and Founder of GamechangerSF. Phil was at the conference to present a session where he translated theory into action as he made and launched a large batch of ads in 15 …

]]>The Data is in the Details When it Comes to Testing Ad Creative. Live from Mobile Growth Summit in San Francisco, our host Peggy Anne Salz checks in with Phil Shpilberg, President and Founder of GamechangerSF. Phil was at the conference to present a session where he translated theory into action as he made and launched a large batch of ads in 15 minutes. He stopped by the podcast booth to discuss how he uses data and multivariate techniques to build winning creative to power user acquisition strategies for his clients.

Phil is finding that minor details—like the color of CTA buttons—are actually driving a lot of the variation that he sees in campaigns (and how his team built out a reporting system that could handle looking at so much detail). Phil also weighs in on what not to do when testing creative and shares why he looks for the outliers when he’s diving into data.

]]>Mobile gaming growth is breaking records. The real action is at the intersection of mobile gaming and esports—an interactive gaming genre that allows multiplayer competitions and powers stadium-packing tournaments—and developers, players and investors are paying attention.

Remarkably, mobile now rules as the largest and fastest-growing segment of the global gaming market. In 2019 app market intelligence provider App Annie reckons mobile accounted for 60% of all gaming consumer spend. In 2020 mobile gaming revenues are pegged to cross the $100 billion mark, according to research firm Newzoo. Already mobile is well on course to reach the size of today’s entire video gaming industry, a sector with an eye-watering $116 billion in revenue that dwarfs music and movies combined.

Esports is also hitting some impressive milestones. This year the esports economy will exceed $1 billion for the first time. The esports industry is still taking shape, but if last year’s record-breaking competitions are any indication, the combination of esports with mobile will result in more than a massive market. It lays the groundwork for a new kind of mobile-first marketplace.

The numbers (and the audiences) add up. Today, mobile gaming counts 2.6 billion players globally. The advance of esports gaming (already accelerating the convergence of sports in both the digital realm and the physical world) combined with the might of mobile produces a force sure to drive the future of entertainment. Streaming companies, including Netflix, can read the writing on the wall—and it’s ominous. In its Q1 2019 letter to shareholders, Netflix wrote: “We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO.” Games like Fortnite, which chalked up a massive $2.4 billion in digital revenue last year, have evolved into marketplaces where gamers spend lots of time and loads of money.

Esports companies are raking in the revenues (and fellow Forbes writer Christina Settimi lists the most valuable esports companies here), but most are focused on hard-core and mid-core gaming genres that typically draw a majority-male player community. What about female players and audiences who aren’t pros, but have the potential?

That largely untapped market is the starting point for a much bigger vision pursued by Skillz, a company shifting the paradigm to make esports inclusive and profitable for players and developers. “We’re leading the next wave of entertainment by empowering mobile game developers and players with democratized access to fun, fair competition for real prizes,” Skillz CEO and founder Andrew Paradise said in a statement. It’s a mission that has earned Skillz distinction as a Top 50 Industry Disruptor by CNBC. (The business news company vets Disruptors based on sales, user growth, company developments and the strength of their tech.) Skillz has also grown its user community to over 30 million players who have competed in over a billion tournaments in 2018.

“Any game can be an esport, and any player can be a champion,” Paradise says. It’s more than his favorite business mantra. It’s the mindset that powers user acquisition and retention strategies developed by Skillz and deployed by Justin Sampson, Skillz User Acquisition Manager and a Mobile Hero recognized for his app marketing expertise. “Today’s mobile players are extremely diverse,” Sampson tells me in an interview. “That’s why Skillz invests a lot of time creating experiences that resonate with all kinds of players and skill levels.”

Another focus is on dynamic creatives. “It’s important to customize ad creative campaigns based on networks, countries, platforms and more,” Sampson explains. It’s a smart strategy that has helped Skillz “expand our portfolio matrix and better understand the variance for our growing audience.”

Understanding and engaging different types of users based on different sets of lifestyle characteristics is an approach that helps Skillz develop higher performing ad creatives. It’s also essential to discovering and delighting new audiences. Sampson’s team recognized the tremendous potential of appealing to young mothers who love to participate in esports and acted on it quickly, developing “hit ads in a matter of weeks that were highly efficient.” Sampson says of the approach, “It’s all about understanding your players and having the right data to provide insights that support your efforts.”

In 2018 Skillz set a new record, paying out $8 million in total cash prizes to its top 10 players. Of the 10 players, seven were women. One of the players, Jennifer “jpark87” Park, has honed real skills with tangible benefits. “When I first started competing on the Skillz platform, I never realized this was something I could do professionally,” she said in a statement. The $627,191 she netted in prizes in 2018 has helped put the engineering student from Westland, Michigan, through college.

It’s a win for female players who engage with Skillz games, but it’s also a big boost to the company, which is no doubt eyeing the tremendous and untapped female market.

Indeed, women’s interest in esports is soaring. The HitmarkerJobs.com’s 2018 study of the market reports 20% of jobs in the industry are held by women. As to playing the games, not just making them, females have overtaken their male counterparts. Newzoo estimates women already make up 46% of the global gaming population and pegs the number of female gaming enthusiasts at a cool one billion. Meanwhile, a recent report from Kids Insights, a market intelligence company focused on children, parents and family sectors, reveals that females dominate esports. A whopping 75% of female gamers prefer playing on mobile devices, and the demographic contributes 68% of all revenue generated through mobile gaming.

Disrupting and democratizing esports with a platform play

Skillz is rewriting the playbook on how games are consumed, developed and monetized. The approach has its roots in Paradise’s own frustration with gaming monetization models after an accidental click opened a browser page that took him out of play and caused him to lose the game. “I was determined to find a better way for game developers to monetize without detracting from the player experience,” he would later recall in an interview.

The company has achieved this with what Paradise calls a “marketplace platform that enables developers to easily integrate a layer of competition into their games.” Skillz company doesn’t create its own titles or franchises. Instead, it enables a growing community of 20,000+ developers to turn mobile games from solitaire and mahjong to sports-related mobile genres such as bowling and golf into competitive esports.

Its ranks are sure to swell as more companies and organizations get on board to leverage the platform, the player community and other benefits. In September, International Game Developers Association (IGDA) joined with Skillz in a move that IGDA Executive Director Renee Gittins said in a press statement empowers the organization’s network of 10,000 chapters of game developer studios “with the tools and connection they need to make their games successful.”

The motor is a solid tech stack that Trip Hawkins, the digital gaming veteran who founded Electronic Arts and now sits on the Skillz advisory board, says gives the company a “head start” on competitors. “A whole tech stack for esports had not been built or standardized,” he said in an interview with Techcrunch. “But there has to be a set of platform features to let players have accounts and set up the way they need [to] be able to communicate and broadcast, or be broadcast, make payments, manage transactions and receive prizes.”

Currently, Skillz, which provides developers with capabilities that go beyond the competitive tournament component to include security, player matchmaking, payment and customer service, tells me it also holds 20+ esports-related patents, including a fair-play algorithm. The company hosts over four million tournament entries a day and distributes $60 million in prizes each month.

More recently, Skillz announced a strategic investment from 32 Equity, the investment arm of the National Football League (NFL). The decision, Kevin LaForce, VP of 32 Equity, said in a press statement is linked with the “belief that the [Skillz] platform is “driving the future of mobile entertainment, which is an area the NFL believes is critical to engage our fans in an increasingly connected world.”

The flexibility that licensing the Skillz platform provides game creators is vital, Paradise said in an interview with Pocket Gamer. With it, developers can focus on designing a competitive game that attracts players and then scale up elements to build out their audience. The alternative to this bottom-up approach—namely, spending to create a successful esports game out of the gate —can be both risky and incredibly expensive.

The “field” for mobile esports gameplay may be a virtual one, but the challenges faced by developers in the rapidly expanding space are real. Women gamers, too, will welcome a less gendered spirit of play. With its innovative strategies and platform, Skillz levels up the action for all.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/skillz-combines-mobile-and-esports-enables-indie-developers-and-women-gamers-to-level-up/feed/0The snack is back: How messaging will satisfy audience appetite for bite-sized contenthttps://mobilegroove.com/the-snack-is-back-how-messaging-will-satisfy-audience-appetite-for-bite-sized-content/
https://mobilegroove.com/the-snack-is-back-how-messaging-will-satisfy-audience-appetite-for-bite-sized-content/#respondSun, 09 Feb 2020 10:52:23 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20469A decade ago, The Power Of Pull described the amazing outcomes possible when we have the tools to find and access the people, content, information, and resources we need. Pull was seen as the mechanism that would put people in control. It would give them more choices and more information to make those choices.

]]>A decade ago, The Power Of Pull described the amazing outcomes possible when we have the tools to find and access the people, content, information, and resources we need. Pull was seen as the mechanism that would put people in control. It would give them more choices and more information to make those choices.

Today, pull has been turbo-charged by mobile, a transformative technology (the impact of which the authors could not address in their book, so I will here). Mobile has become our collective default state. It eclipses all other digital technology and enables us to do exactly what the authors hoped we would: “collaborate in a complete re-imagination” of our experiences. From content to commerce, and from advertising to advocacy, mobile has left an indelible mark.

You could even say that, thanks to mobile, the Power of Pull has finally arrived. But it’s the advance of messaging apps and platforms that takes this to a new level. Pull brought us the toolset and the mindset to take charge of our content and experiences. Mobile amplified this ability exponentially. And messaging is giving us a new environment to experience both.

A new wave

The first wave of messaging saw the emergence of what I will call pull content, delivered primarily via app notifications. In this scenario, individuals granted permission and volunteered preferences (the choice of news categories, the frequency of alerts and notifications, the level of personalization). And that they opt-in is a must for audiences increasingly concerned about personal privacy. For this reason, content companies that delivered pull content could build trust and brand. In retrospect, it was this reach and impact that allowed the first wave to deliver scalable efficiency.

The second wave of pull, powered by mobile messaging apps and platforms, is destined to be even more transformative because it promises scalable connectivity. Messaging is a platform where companies can deliver interactive, personalized, and conversational experiences. And they can do it affordably at scale.

Messaging is also free to consumers. It also vastly reduces the blight of unsolicited communication. That’s because, as a rule, messaging platforms do not permit companies to send bulk messages as they can via SMS. And it’s growing in popularity. Analysts forecast that the volume of messages sent via the major messaging platforms is expected to exceed the number of SMS text messages by as much as 10x in 2020.

Pull and pictures

Messaging apps and platforms provide an ideal space for companies to forge relationships with audiences and drive connection with brand fans. They have also become the epicenter of our most frequent digital activity: messaging. In August 2018, app market intelligence provider Apptopia reported users globally spent a whopping 85 billion hours in WhatsApp over a period of just three months. (Compare that to 31 billion hours spent on Facebook).

Messaging platforms have experienced explosive growth in users and usage, outpacing some of the biggest social media channels. Together, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger alone have nearly three billion daily active users– that’s almost half the planet. In 2018 the Big Four messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber) had 4.1 billion combined users. A whopping 72 trillion messages were sent across these platforms (compared to 1.6 trillion searches on Google).

However, people aren’t just messaging more or more often. Empowered by pull, are using the universal language of pictures. People share more than 4.5 billion photos, 1 billion videos, and 80 million GIFs per day on WhatsApp alone. A comprehensive analysis of people’s messaging behaviors on Facebook Messenger (conducted by Facebook) reveals that nearly 60% of respondents have sent emoji-only messages to communicate a concept. What’s more, over half indicated that messaging has replaced all other forms of communication.

United by their passions and interests (supported by a shared visual language), this audience craves instant access to what matters. There’s no room for trial and error. Content must be hyper-personalized, highly visual, and always to the point. Against this backdrop, messaging platforms offer the perfect petri dish to experiment with new approaches around content design and distribution.

Bite-size is back

Messaging platforms also unlock the potential of content companies to satisfy our appetite for bite-sized content. That means short videos, short-form content, graphics, and memes. Content that might feel out-of-place in-app or online is at home on messaging platforms. Media companies and publishers need no convincing. In fact, some new organizations are encouraging audiences to visually enhance the conversation.

The Washington Post’s news stickers on Viber.

The Washington Post, which distributes snackable news content via Viber, a messaging app used by more than one billion people worldwide, has had remarkable success with a series of news-related stickers. The packs count more than 2 million downloads since they were first launched in 2016. “The stickers we’ve created allow users to say what they want about news without having to type a complete thought and simply add delight and character to their conversation,” Amy King, Design Director of Emerging News Products at The Washington Post said in a recent interview.

The Washington Post is just one of a long line of news organizations — including the BBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and Financial Times — that are experimenting with messaging apps as an additional distribution channel. For many, the primary focus has been on providing short news updates and links to related and relevant content. However, some companies have zeroed in on the interactive nature of messaging platforms. They’re adding a new dimension to bite-sized news and leveraging yet another aspect of pull: two-way conversation.

Micro-newsletters for mass audiences

Bloomberg has harnessed WhatsApp to send messages every day and hear back from users directly, Katie Boyce, Managing Editor, Digital, Bloomberg, stated in an email interview. “After big news would break, we started to ask our WhatsApp audience what they want to know. We would get such thoughtful feedback that we could then incorporate it into our reporting and send back updates,” she explains. “It was a much different conversation than what we get on our public social channels. We built up a very highly engaged audience.”

It also paved the way for Bloomberg to bundle bite-sized content into personalized packages that balance depth with the demand for distilled information. The outcome was a new format it calls the “micro newsletter.” The content is longer than a push alert but shorter than a typical newsletter.

Boyce describes the content as a “very conversational update three times a day at the end of each region’s news day, summarizing the big stories of the day.” It has been so popular with the audience that it prompted Bloomberg to “create multiple sub-groups around topics like markets or the Middle East so that we could send more targeted messages.”

Using this approach, which was nominated for a SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia), a benchmark for world-class journalism, Bloomberg has done more than grow its numbers. It has recruited and audience of advocates eager to follow the discussion no matter where it takes them.

In December Bloomberg moved its distribution to Telegram, a messaging platform projected to hit 1 billion users by 2022. (Admittedly, Bloomberg’s move was driven more by necessity than inspiration as Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, made good on its promise to crack down on what it considers “non-personal” use on the platform. In December efforts turned to the gray area of newsletters. And it ruled that publishers will no longer be allowed to send out newsletters on WhatsApp.)

Within two weeks of moving the micro-newsletter messages over to Telegram, Boyce reports that Bloomberg “gained over 25,000 followers” on the new platform many of whom migrated from WhatsApp. But efforts to leverage the popularity of messaging platforms doesn’t stop there. Bloomberg is “continuously evaluating other ways to meet users where they are,” Boyce says. It’s a smart approach in the age of pull.

Messaging is the new frontier

As we kick off a new decade, it’s critical that content creators — be they media companies or marketers — understand consumers’ growing appetite for concentrated content on their terms and in the spaces where they choose to congregate. It’s a global phenomenon that sees audiences flocking to messaging apps, drawn by the simplicity of snackable content.

It also offers audiences the opportunity to “share and discuss news, away from the toxicity of political debate that threatens more open spaces,” according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Based on data from almost 40 countries across six continents, the report highlights this mega-trend. It notes that WhatsApp has already become a primary network for discussing and sharing news in western countries (where WhatsApp has a strong presence) as well as non-western countries including Brazil (53%), Malaysia (50%) and South Africa (49%). The upshot: “as more people use messaging services, news usage has also risen.”

Now that news organizations and media companies have an audience on these platforms, they must adopt the culture and language of these communities and capture the Zeitgeist to deliver on the promise of pull. A decade ago, companies were just beginning to develop this mindset, with the understanding that constant and instant accessibility of information was an audience demand and responding with models that would rebalance businesses and organizations to be powered by pull.

But there was a catch. We had the message, to borrow a concept from the visionary Marshall McLuhan. But without messaging platforms, we lacked the medium to deliver at scale. Today we have both. Mobile — messaging in particular — is where people spend their time. And content companies who build experiences that are right-sized and optimized can leverage this behavior to engage highly-receptive audiences.

We get the inside track when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Playstudios’ Noga Laron, Head of Marketing & Growth, and Assaf Shalev, Head of Creative Marketing. From cementing close collaboration (same room, not just building) to deciding a common language (no nerd-speak, please), this dynamic duo freely shares practical steps marketers can follow to cultivate data and design capabilities in-house. Fun and frank convo makes Episode #370 of this series one you won’t want to miss.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/fusing-data-and-design-to-deliver-compelling-mobile-ad-creatives/feed/0Revive Retention Rates With A New Frameworkhttps://mobilegroove.com/revive-retention-rates-with-a-new-framework/
https://mobilegroove.com/revive-retention-rates-with-a-new-framework/#respondFri, 07 Feb 2020 08:43:52 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20347Customer acquisition costs are on the rise, forcing marketers to think more about retaining the users they’ve already spent mightily to obtain. But to keep your customers, you need to understand them.

]]>Customer acquisition costs are on the rise, forcing marketers to think more about retaining the users they’ve already spent mightily to obtain. But to keep your customers, you need to understand them. CleverTap CEO and Co-founder, Sunil Thomas, advises app marketers to go beyond demographics to understand what motivates customers to take action. He says, “marketers need a framework that will allow them to develop a more nuanced view of customer engagement and take action long before key metrics head south.”

Thomas points to retention data from mobile analytics and attribution provider AppsFlyer (2019 App Trends Report), which finds that just 13% of users still interact with an app by day three after the install, marking a critical period when re-engagement efforts could deliver significant business benefits. In other words, there is no time to waste. Retention efforts need to begin almost as soon as you’ve won a user.

RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) is a behavioral segmentation framework that looks at customer activity to determine how recently and frequently someone performed a key action, and Thomas believes it is the key to retaining your users. It also measures the monetary value of the action to help marketers calculate customer lifetime value and make a call on whether campaigns to re-activate a customer is money well spent. Insights into how and when customers interact with a brand or engage with campaigns empower marketers to enhance the customer experience when, where and how it counts.

Take a deeper dive into how RFM can help you reframe how you think about your customers—and make sure they stay customers—in the original article at AdWeek. (Editor’s Note: CleverTap is a Mobile Presence podcast sponsor and MobileGroove supporter.)

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/revive-retention-rates-with-a-new-framework/feed/0Beyond Growth Hacks: 3 Experts Share Mobile Marketing Strategies for 2020https://mobilegroove.com/beyond-growth-hacks-3-experts-share-mobile-marketing-strategies-for-2020/
https://mobilegroove.com/beyond-growth-hacks-3-experts-share-mobile-marketing-strategies-for-2020/#respondThu, 23 Jan 2020 09:33:07 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20302A rigorous analysis of the reams of mobile and marketing predictions for the new year suggests 2020 will be remembered as the year mobile-first marketing finally grew up. The obsession with short-term gains and growth hacks that marked the last decade is fast being replaced by the realization that "fully-baked business models" and strategies that demonstrate financial self-control define the path to profitability and sustainability.

]]>A rigorous analysis of the reams of mobile and marketing predictions for the new year suggests 2020 will be remembered as the year mobile-first marketing finally grew up. The obsession with short-term gains and growth hacks that marked the last decade is fast being replaced by the realization that “fully-baked business models” and strategies that demonstrate financial self-control define the path to profitability and sustainability.

The end of the “cheap money era” also turns up the pressure on marketing teams to be resourceful with spend and relentless in their pursuit of fresh audiences and emerging channels. It’s an enormous challenge in a market where the Big Two (Facebook and Google) dominate, driving customer acquisition costs through the roof and blocking the path for new large-scale channels to gain critical mass. To succeed in this environment, the 2020 marketer will need to have a firm grasp of full-funnel data, the ability to manage algorithmic campaigns and the vision to create cross-functional teams that combine talent from marketing, product and engineering.

“Marketing teams that do not control monetization and strategy will simply be ineffectual,” Eric Seufert, a media strategist, user acquisition specialist and quantitative marketer, writes on Mobile Dev Memo. He connects the dots to make a provocative claim: 2020 will mark the death of the textbook CMO. It’s a position that belongs to “an exclusively marketing-oriented executive for mobile-first companies”—and it belongs to the past. While it is extreme to suggest CMOs will be passé starting this year, there is truth in Seufert’s observation that “without deep analytics and monetization experience, a marketing leader cannot properly scale a mobile-first business.”Today In: Innovation

The 2020 marketer is a new breed that drives teamwork and devours data to define targets, assess trade-offs, and set stretch goals. It’s here that the 2019 Mobile App Trends Report from Liftoff, a mobile marketing and retargeting platform, provides a valuable analysis of the broader developments and benchmarks essential to inform an audience-first, mobile-first strategy. The report combines app intelligence and Liftoff internal data to give marketers a holistic view of the trends and metrics influencing marketing across a variety of app categories and regions.

Chock full of graphs and metrics, the 64-page report presents us with a lot to digest. I draw from interviews with three expert mobile marketers (one of whom is a Liftoff Mobile Hero, an accolade that underlines their performance marketing accomplishments) to provide a fresh perspective on the opportunities and challenges shaping the global app marketplace and the business agenda for the 2020 marketer. [Disclosure: I regularly interview Mobile Heroes as the host of Mobile Presence, a weekly podcast for which I am not paid. Later this month I will be a guest and moderator on Mobile App Trends: Analysis of the App Ecosystem, a Liftoff webinar for which I am not paid.]

#1 Realign talent to achieve targets.

Shopping apps are firmly established as the essential go-to for inspiration and assistance, in store and throughout the customer journey. It’s a dynamic that drives down costs as users are more affordable to acquire and more apt to engage. But the 2020 marketer faces significant challenges scaling in a market where app downloads and revenues are showing signs of fatigue.

The App Trends report reveals new uploads of shopping apps have stalled, and downloads have plateaued at a high level. Specifically, downloads have dropped 1.7% to reach 5.9 billion in 2019 (compared to 6 billion the previous year). Revenue is also down by nearly half, reaching $95.6 million. Significantly, shopping apps lead where it counts. At 7.7%, engagement rates for shopping apps are among the highest. Do the math, and there is plenty of money to be made—provided shopping app marketers build teams’ synergy by realigning internal resources and talents to acquire and retain high-quality users with strong purchase intentions.

Cody Ryan, VP of Growth Marketing, IBOTTA

This is the view of Cody Ryan, VP of Growth Marketing at Ibotta, a company that lets users earn cash back on in-store and online purchases. “The biggest limit to a company’s ability to grow is the quality of its funnel,” Ryan tells me. However, advancements in marketing automation and marketing channels that harness algorithms to improve targeting and make a better match between campaigns and cohorts combine to give the 2020 marketer abilities akin to superpowers. “If you’re not loading the funnel intelligently, you’re behind the curve,” he explains.

To stay ahead of retail rivals, Ibotta has aligned talent and technology to the customer life cycle. “We no longer think about user acquisition in the traditional sense,” Ryan explains. Instead, Ibotta “puts more emphasis on retention and has restructured to allocate more resources and headcount to growth functions dedicated to driving ongoing [app] usage.” The approach, he says, is paying dividends, allowing Ibotta to report retention rates that far exceed the Day 30 retention benchmark of 3.5% from the App Trends report.

This year Ibotta is taking the effort to a new level. “For the first time, we have fully dedicated squads focused on each stage of the funnel,” Ryan explains. “From acquisition to activation to retention, the squads are at the core of our wider strategy to achieve cross-functional alignment on product, marketing and engineering.” His advice to the 2020 marketer: “Get organizational buy-in on down-funnel retention being a top priority and build your teams around winning in this area.” In competitive markets, apps with the highest retention will have the most scalable growth and sustainable success.

# 2 Tackle complexity with a funnel-focused structure.

Over the past five years, user activity on finance apps has rocketed by 354%, a development that cements apps as the channel of choice for consumers to manage their finances and plan their future. This positive dynamic is echoed in the App Trends report. While the number of new apps uploaded has slowed, app downloads have soared. At 6.8 billion downloads, finance app downloads have increased 4% from the previous year. What’s more, the cost to activate this audience is attractive. The deep-funnel conversion of purchase (using the app to transact) comes in at $38.64, 55% less than the cost to generate a conversion on a gaming app, for example. Even better: Finance app users are fast movers. The report clocks the time from download to action at only 70 minutes. By comparison, the install-to-purchase time for gaming apps is 46 hours and 35 minutes.

Kiki Burton, Head of Growth Marketing, CREDIT KARMA

Overall, the data tells a positive story. Consumers clearly accept and embrace mobile apps. However, the issue facing the 2020 marketer is how to create campaigns that drive more sessions and encourage lasting loyalty. It’s a challenge Credit Karma is winning thanks to a mobile-first strategy and an organization that cultivates in-house expertise, Kiki Burton, Head of Growth Marketing at Credit Karma, tells me in an interview. “Our marketing organization and our strategy are heavily indexed on having talent in house. This has given us the faculty to focus on engagement and re-engagement and keep pace with cutting-edge trends,” she explains. This agility, combined with a laser focus on the user life cycle, has allowed Credit Karma to acquire “north of 100 million members” in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

That milestone audience achievement also underlines the importance of combining performance marketing and product. To maintain the momentum, Credit Karma organizes its marketing team around the funnel, not user groups. “It all goes back to surfacing the right information at the right time and aligned with our members’ consumption patterns,” she explains. To make this vision a reality, the company has developed new internal structures called “pods” that combine performance marketers, creative talent, analytics partners and operations managers and channels their efforts toward a single goal. “Having a dedicated cross-functional group focused on major marketing initiatives gives us the velocity to make progress,” Burton explains. “In order to have tight alignment between marketing and product teams, our growth marketers have specific domain expertise related to a particular vertical at Credit Karma, like our mortgage and personal loans verticals, for example. To complement that structure, we have a centralized marketing team in place to ensure cohesive messaging and standards across all our marketing channels and campaigns.”

Credit Karma leveraged this structure to launch a new product experience on mobile, known as Stories. Through Stories, Credit Karma “surfaces the most relevant information to each of its members in a newsfeed-like format, which makes it easier for members to understand, digest and take action,” Burton explains. From the moment users enter the product, they are presented with personalized insights and recommendations to help them achieve financial progress. During the test period Credit Karma rolled the product out to roughly 350,000 members and immediately saw a 3.1% increase in member engagement with the Credit Karma app. The numbers speak volumes and shed valuable light on the way ahead for the 2020 marketer. Burton’s advice: “Marketing is becoming engagement lifecycle marketing. Marketers must evolve their marketing strategy to layer up to that, and this requires a comprehensive suite of tools and a marketing structure that will allow you to provide personalized recommendations that drive interaction with your app and build trust.”

#3 Push the boundaries and keep the passion.

An explosion in dating apps is driving massive revenues around the world, but it’s also fueling increased competition for users. The latest numbers in the App Trend report note Social (which includes dating apps) as a top-grossing app category. Downloads remain robust (showing an increase of 3% over the previous year) and install costs are attractive. According to the report, the cost to acquire a user who commits to a subscription (the primary monetization model for many dating apps) is a steal. At $36.39, costs deep in the funnel are down nearly 60% compared to the previous year—and engagement rates at the higher end of the scale are a bonus.

Natasha Upal, VP of Marketing & Growth, CLOVER INC.

But there is a catch. While marketers have cracked the code on what it takes to drive middle-funnel activity, such as registration, they have yet to decipher how to trigger the deep-funnel activities that count, such as purchases and subscriptions. In the case of social apps, nearly 60% of users register but fail to take the plunge. It’s a dangerous disconnect that will require the 2020 marketers to be resourceful and radical at the same time, Natasha Upal, VP of Marketing & Growth at Clover Inc., an on-demand dating service, tells me in an interview.

Upal recommends a “bolder approach to unlocking new inventory.” In practice, this means “exploring opportunities to address captive audiences on streaming services such as Spotify” or retrying channels that are shaping up to make a splash, such as Pinterest and Twitter. Another solid channel is Tik Tok. Clover launched on the short-form, video-sharing app through a beta in 2019 and “quickly saw CPIs of 30% less,” according to Upal. But it’s not enough to diversify channels and spend to reach new audiences. Upal also urges marketers to test new DSPs (demand-side platforms) for automated ad purchases. Her tip: Do your homework to find DSPs that are app-first and mobile-first. A web focus doesn’t cut it.

However, making the right channel and partner choices is an empty victory if marketers don’t invest the effort to extract maximum value from them. “You need to be continually testing and trying,” Upal explains. “It’s exhausting, which is why you also need to have the intensity and the passion to keep the momentum going.” Regular creative reviews and brainstorms help the team reflect, learn and keep up a continuous ideation flow, she adds. “It has led to some great out-of-the-box concepts but also novel ways to create brand awareness quickly and cost-effectively. For example, working with in-field Brand Ambassadors to create online advocacy.”

Being experimental is a plus, but the 2020 marketer will also need to inspire teams to take charge. “It’s a good idea to formalize this into someone’s job description or team, so the accountability for R&D is there,” Upal explains. “It should also form an integral part of the marketing roadmap for the year with an allocated budget and specific targets.” Drawing from her own product marketing background Upal has already applied many of those principles to the company’s growth marketing approach.

Finally, she adds, keep individuals accountable but use regular touchpoints to remind that it is a team-wide responsibility to research, test and develop new tools, platforms and tactics. “Find the right balance between drumming up excitement for new ideas, services or tools—or whatever—but stay motivated by reminding your stakeholders that only one percent of what you test may actually fly,” she adds. “To quote a dating analogy, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.”

From the vantage point of these three innovative practitioners, it’s clear that the future is now. The 2020 marketer who heeds their advice will be making strategic investments in enduring success rather than chasing short-lived, quick wins that can’t be predicted (or repeated).

]]> Fintech apps are getting personal, helping consumers manage their lives, not just their money. Current, a nimble neobank, is gaining steam with an app focused on “connecting your money to the friends, family, brands and experiences that matter.” But how can apps get that close to customers? What are the approaches and creatives that build trust? How should you align product and marketing to deliver an amazing user experience? We get the inside track when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Drew Fung, Director of User Acquisition & Growth at Current, and a Mobile Hero recognized for his user acquisition expertise and accomplishments. Drew shares novel ways to interest and acquire Millennials and lifts the lid on the ad creatives that inspire trust. He also draws from his recent blog to highlight best practices for choosing the right attribution window, keep watch on fraud, and ensure that marketers don’t pay for the same users twice.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/current-tailoring-customer-app-experiences-and-campaigns-to-build-trust/feed/0Stopping Churn Before It Startshttps://mobilegroove.com/stopping-churn-before-it-starts/
https://mobilegroove.com/stopping-churn-before-it-starts/#respondWed, 15 Jan 2020 11:33:37 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20188When it comes to mobile, the advantages of offering the appropriate marketing and messaging at the appropriate point in the funnel can be massive. Indeed, research shows that sending targeted messages tailored to a specific customer segment can increase conversions by up to 200%.

]]>When it comes to mobile, the advantages of offering the appropriate marketing and messaging at the appropriate point in the funnel can be massive. Indeed, research shows that sending targeted messages tailored to a specific customer segment can increase conversions by up to 200%.

A strategy that harnesses AI and machine learning to connect with customers in a culturally relevant way based on an analysis of the millions of datapoints—and signals that communicate their context—is a bonus. But even the best mix of hard data and soft skills will miss the mark if content companies continue to segment their audience by static demographics, not dynamic actions. A laser focus on basic demographics doesn’t just block marketers from delivering a superior user experience—it blinds them to the key engagement activities that are surefire indicators of users who are primed for purchases or ready to churn.

How many times has the user performed a specific event? How long has it been since the last interaction with your content? How quickly or slowly is the user moving through the funnel—and what nudges might convince and convert him or her to sign up for a subscription? These are critical questions that companies can only answer if they go beyond demographics to get a firm grasp of behavioral segmentation models.

The timing is right for a renewed focus on RFM (recency, frequency, monetary), a framework that allows companies to tailor behavioral segmentation to identify how recently and frequently user groups have performed a key action. To make sure the effort marketers invest in this model also drives returns, RFM looks at the monetary value of the action (such as registering for a limited trial offer).

An approach that offers aggregate value based on purchases, content consumed, or subscriptions for each customer segment doesn’t just save marketers time doing the math. Insights into how users engage and how much it’s worth empower marketers to enhance the user experience and—ultimately—increase customer lifetime value. Here are some guidelines marketers can follow to motivate active (and inactive) customer segments and move the needle on their app.

Start by examining the key events in your app inextricably linked with high-value users and high revenues for your business. For a media app, it could be the number of times users viewed or shared content. Keep in mind that pinpointing the activity that matters most is the first step to attaching a qualifiable value to your user segments.

Attributing the right monetary value to each segment allows you to quickly identify your most-active and least-active users. Determine the marginal utility of every user segment and decide if (and when) it pays to allocate campaign spend. Use these insights to make sure high-value users stay hooked on your app or to re-engage users who show signs of churn.

Sunil Thomas, CEO and co-founder of CleverTap, a company that provides a customer retention platform to enable digital-first brands to increase customer lifetime value and key conversion metrics, tells me the real power for RFM kicks in when marketers harness its principles to ensure they don’t lose users in the first place. “Start by identifying the segment of users who have transacted in the past, but now show a drop-off in activity,” he says. “Since this is a segment that used to be active, it’s a smart move to send an update to show off new features or fresh content you have added since they last visited.”

The same approach can be used to wake up your hibernating users. In this scenario, Thomas explains, notifications and recommendations to remind readers of your app’s value are surefire ways to win back users. It’s also important to tailor communications to suit their channels of choice. (CleverTap’s internal research shows that extremely loyal and active users prefer push. In fact, a whopping 92% of users in this segment are receptive to mobile push, compared to 53% on email.)

Effective marketing requires marketers to tailor all forms of communications to match precisely where consumers are in the journey. It also demands that marketers master the capabilities to reach distinct user segments with messaging they appreciate—on the channel they prefer—and identify the direct impact of a campaign on their userbase. Segmentation based on what users do (and don’t do) in-app (including user onboarding and efforts to improve app retention) equips you to deliver campaigns and messaging that strike a chord and a positive user experience that keeps users coming back.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/stopping-churn-before-it-starts/feed/0Major 2020 Tech Trends And The Seismic Shift From Acquisition To Engagementhttps://mobilegroove.com/major-2020-tech-trends-and-the-seismic-shift-from-acquisition-to-engagement/
https://mobilegroove.com/major-2020-tech-trends-and-the-seismic-shift-from-acquisition-to-engagement/#respondWed, 15 Jan 2020 10:01:01 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20315Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with John Koetsier—journalist, analyst and futurist—to spotlight emerging developments and disruptive forces shaping digital in 2020. From the requirement to curtail “Big Tech” to the demand for smarter “smart” tech, and from the shift away from customer acquisition toward engagement to the rise of virtual experiences (over physical ones), John walks us through the megatrends sure to mark the year ahead.
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]]> Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with John Koetsier—journalist, analyst and futurist—to spotlight emerging developments and disruptive forces shaping digital in 2020. From the requirement to curtail “Big Tech” to the demand for smarter “smart” tech, and from the shift away from customer acquisition toward engagement to the rise of virtual experiences (over physical ones), John walks us through the megatrends sure to mark the year ahead. For John, 2019 was the year of going viral as his posts on Forbes reached audiences in the millions. The future will see John embrace the power of “live” (his personal motto for 2020) and expand his own series of video interview shows on Tech First Draft and elsewhere.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/major-2020-tech-trends-and-the-seismic-shift-from-acquisition-to-engagement/feed/0Geolocation: Then and Nowhttps://mobilegroove.com/geolocation-then-and-now/
https://mobilegroove.com/geolocation-then-and-now/#respondTue, 14 Jan 2020 21:10:22 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20210Gone are the days when location, location, location applied only to brick-and-mortar businesses. Location has played an increasingly important role in the virtual world, with personalization steering the customer experience journey.

]]>Gone are the days when location, location, location applied only to brick-and-mortar businesses. Location has played an increasingly important role in the virtual world, with personalization steering the customer experience journey. More specifically, geolocation data has provided marketers with an added layer of information to help form the customer experience. When combined with other demographic data available today, it provides the key to a marketplace in which targeted messaging can work wonders for an advertising campaign or brand activation.

“When we started, people were doing geolocation based on WHOIS data, looking at who IP addresses are registered to in public databases, to target whether somebody was a U.S. user or international, and that was the bulk of it. What we did to make it different is figure out where routers and endpoint equipment were to develop a rich map of the internet,” says Rob Friedman, co-founder and EVP of Digital Element, the Atlanta-based technology company that helped pioneer the geolocation space in 1999, when its NetAcuity technology was introduced, so users can be geographically targeted by IP address.

“Now, with mobile and people opting in to share their location with GPS, our customers are comfortable with even more micro-targeting in order to help consumers find what they are looking for and get advertising that’s relevant to them,” he says. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Digital Element recently announced it delivers 10 times more unique global locations than its nearest competitor. Netflix, Hulu, Pinterest, Sony, and the BBC are just a few of the hundreds of brands the company works with.

The benefits of geolocation in the marketing world are many—including localizing content by user and area, enhancing analytics, detecting fraud, and managing digital rights—using a few different methods such as geofencing, geo-conquesting (when one business poaches a customer from another via location-based ads), and proximity marketing. While IP-based geolocation is accurate at a granular level, it cannot disclose the actual identity or address of the associated user, so the data obtained is privacy-sensitive.

“Geolocation is a great way to drive consumers to specific locations for activations and rewards,” says Alen Paul Silverrstieen, CEO of the Canadian technology firm Imagination Park. Its ImagineAR augmented reality (AR) platform allows stores to create an AR activation (which can include coupons, sweepstakes, and a scavenger hunt) to gamify the experience for shoppers. “By leveraging mobile phones, AR delivers the rewards and messaging right into the consumer’s hands,” he says.

During the 2018 holiday season, ImagineAR was used by the Mall of America, the largest mall in the U.S., to engage shoppers in a scavenger hunt with the prospect of winning a gift card. This also assisted in directing traffic flow to specific stores within the mall. Silverrstieen adds, “With the ImagineAR mobile app, consumers are required to opt in to participate in the location-based engagements as well as approve the privacy notice. As the locations are preset by the brands for each campaign, the location is already known in advance and the consumer acknowledges their individual participation in the AR engagement.”

MobileGroove’s chief analyst and founder Peggy Anne Salz says that most mobile users are willing to share their location information if permission is sought ahead of time and they receive something of value in return. The average consumer expects a personalized experience, what she calls the “sense of self-entitlement. Getting what you want, when you want it, is not even a question. A mobile website has to load in a second, so we have very little patience with mobile as a channel—and we have even less patience for something that isn’t relevant to our context or location.” Salz adds, “Location combined with other data is a way to supercharge that content for that experience. The magic is when companies understand how to combine all the data intelligently because then location becomes the ingredient in an entirely different algorithm to amaze us.”

However, an issue recognized by many digital marketers is that of data exhaust, as reported by a 2018 survey released by Digital Element in partnership with the Location Based Marketing Association. A 68% majority of respondents expressed some degree of concern regarding data exhaust, while 28% didn’t know the amount of data they threw away; 61% responded they were not using all of the data available to them. “There’s a lot of data exhaust because businesses are just throwing away data that they could absolutely be using. This data is equally applicable in the mobile world, serving a really important function to provide more relevant than blanket content,” says Susan Daw, Digital Element’s VP of marketing and communications.

A frustration echoed by Salz on the user front is that despite all the location data available to brands, many do not effectively present a satisfying personalization journey. As an expert in app marketing and user engagement, she is well aware of the data being collected but doesn’t see the current uses as fully realizing the potential. An ongoing debate is the security and reliability of the apps that consumers share their details on. “Advertising linked to location is a huge business, and app publishers who have location have valuable rich data. But they have to be careful about selling that data to other marketplaces just because they have it,” Salz states. She stresses that companies must ask, upfront, for permission rather than tell users after the fact. This holds true in the wake of several cases of privacy infringement and data breach concerns, including the Weather Channel app.

“Our hallmark has always been not jeopardizing any individual’s privacy,” says Friedman, sharing that Digital Element’s next focus is on more audience segmentation based on IP addresses (to bridge the gap between web and mobile traffic for better targeting) and attribution linking some of the mobile information with the IP address to ascertain whether certain actions net the desired results. He says, “In the end, it’s about whether you are able to give a better experience to your customers instantly and then determine if your actions can have you generate even more revenue. Everybody wins.”

]]>Macro, micro, and power: Influencers come in different sizes with unique talents and capabilities to boost your brand and tell your story. What is the checklist to choose and manage the right influencer marketing approach? How can you repurpose creatives to get more mileage out of your campaigns? We get the answers when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Natasha Upal, VP of Marketing & Growth, Clover, a top-ranking on-demand dating app. Natasha, a Mobile Hero recognized by Liftoff for her app marketing achievements, shares her pick of tools, agencies, and techniques to help you find the right influencer to deliver your message. She also draws from her expertise to help you bring together teams and talent sure to wow your boss.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/right-sizing-your-influencer-marketing-to-super-charge-results/feed/0How To Meet Your Customers’ Unmet Needs For Conversational Messaginghttps://mobilegroove.com/how-to-meet-your-customers-unmet-needs-for-conversational-messaging/
https://mobilegroove.com/how-to-meet-your-customers-unmet-needs-for-conversational-messaging/#respondWed, 01 Jan 2020 16:34:07 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20284Consumers may be lukewarm about getting promotional messages, but a new study suggests they genuinely welcome more messages if they are useful and timely. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Jeff Hasen, Director of Communications, Sinch, a company providing personalized messaging and other related services, to discuss how messaging — including notifications, rich messaging and chatbots — can fill voids in customer experience.
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]]>Consumers may be lukewarm about getting promotional messages, but a new study suggests they genuinely welcome more messages if they are useful and timely. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Jeff Hasen, Director of Communications, Sinch, a company providing personalized messaging and other related services, to discuss how messaging — including notifications, rich messaging and chatbots — can fill voids in customer experience. They also explore the “opportunity gap” for conversational messaging and brainstorm how businesses can meet their customers’ unmet need for more (and more personal) messaging while respecting personal privacy concerns.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-to-meet-your-customers-unmet-needs-for-conversational-messaging/feed/0How Plantsnap Turns App Users Into Citizen Scientists And Rockets Retention Rateshttps://mobilegroove.com/how-plantsnap-turns-app-users-into-citizen-scientists-and-rockets-retention-rates/
https://mobilegroove.com/how-plantsnap-turns-app-users-into-citizen-scientists-and-rockets-retention-rates/#respondThu, 19 Dec 2019 22:15:43 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20253“Retention is the new acquisition” is the mindset that has allowed Eric Ralls, Founder & CEO of PlantSnap,to turn his app — which allows users to capture an image of a plant or flower and identify it within seconds — into a habit for its 33 million users and counting.
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]]>“Retention is the new acquisition” is the mindset that has allowed Eric Ralls, Founder & CEO of PlantSnap,to turn his app — which allows users to capture an image of a plant or flower and identify it within seconds — into a habit for its 33 million users and counting. Plantsnap doesn’t just encourage nature lovers. It has inspired users to be a community of citizen scientists, using the app to feed into projects and initiatives to educate about global warming and monitor its impact. I chat with Eric about his creative campaigns (one that used perfect timing and precise personalization to increase retention rates by 61%) and the creative spark that gave him the idea for his app — and others coming in the pipeline. We also discuss AI, the innovation he has merged with his love for our planet, and get an update on his StartEngine crowdfunding campaign (you can get involved here) to build similar apps and grow their team.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-plantsnap-turns-app-users-into-citizen-scientists-and-rockets-retention-rates/feed/0Why The Most Successful Marketing Isn’t Logical, So Learn To Channel Irrational Thoughthttps://mobilegroove.com/why-the-most-successful-marketing-isnt-logical-so-learn-to-channel-irrational-thought/
https://mobilegroove.com/why-the-most-successful-marketing-isnt-logical-so-learn-to-channel-irrational-thought/#respondFri, 13 Dec 2019 08:04:06 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20236It’s good fun and good business sense when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK, and author of “Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life,” a path-breaking book that argues thinking rationally and logically is actually not the way to go.
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]]>It’s good fun and good business sense when our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK, and author of “Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life,” a path-breaking book that argues thinking rationally and logically is actually not the way to go. Using real-life examples from his work with some of the world’s biggest brands and influencers, Rory blends behavioral science and case studies to show why marketers who rely on logic may be missing the ideas and inspiration that produce truly effective campaigns. The advertising legend whose TED Talks have been viewed nearly 7 million times also chats candidly about why today’s marketing calls for alchemy and how we can master it to do branding magic.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/why-the-most-successful-marketing-isnt-logical-so-learn-to-channel-irrational-thought/feed/0How eComCon Is Taking Its “Programmatic Everything” Approach To The Streetshttps://mobilegroove.com/how-ecomcon-is-taking-its-programmatic-everything-approach-to-the-streets/
https://mobilegroove.com/how-ecomcon-is-taking-its-programmatic-everything-approach-to-the-streets/#respondWed, 11 Dec 2019 16:06:38 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20279An estimated 65% of all digital ad spend in 2019 was programmatic. The numbers and audiences add up, but marketers also need to educate themselves about the pitfalls and work closely with their media agencies to avoid nasty surprises. We get the inside track on both from Marco Gerlach, Head of Business Development, and Christian Ratsch, MD and Founder of eComCon.
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]]>An estimated 65% of all digital ad spend in 2019 was programmatic. The numbers and audiences add up, but marketers also need to educate themselves about the pitfalls and work closely with their media agencies to avoid nasty surprises. We get the inside track on both from Marco Gerlach, Head of Business Development, and Christian Ratsch, MD and Founder of eComCon. The Germany-based pioneer saw the promise of programmatic – which makes advertising more targeted and buying more efficient – long before most agencies and got in early. They detail the ways eComCon is combining mobile and programmatic with Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising to reach new audiences and walk us through client case studies and key learnings. Finally, our guests share best practices sure to benefit all marketers everywhere.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-ecomcon-is-taking-its-programmatic-everything-approach-to-the-streets/feed/0Go-To-Market Strategies And Growth In China: Positioning Your Company On The Right Side Of Opportunityhttps://mobilegroove.com/go-to-market-strategies-and-growth-in-china-positioning-your-company-on-the-right-side-of-opportunity/
https://mobilegroove.com/go-to-market-strategies-and-growth-in-china-positioning-your-company-on-the-right-side-of-opportunity/#respondMon, 02 Dec 2019 15:22:50 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20231Businesses must weather a challenging climate to penetrate the Chinese market with their tech, but the pay-off has never been higher. At one level, China is an attractive market to foreign tech and home to an urban middle class expected to account for 70% of the population by 2030.
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]]>Businesses must weather a challenging climate to penetrate the Chinese market with their tech, but the pay-off has never been higher. At one level, China is an attractive market to foreign tech and home to an urban middle class expected to account for 70% of the population by 2030. At the other end of the spectrum, China is striking out in new directions, entering new markets — and winning. Whether the goal is to partner with Chinese tech leaders going global or identify tactics to target Chinese consumers, David Sullivan, Founder & Managing Director of Alliance Development Group (ADG), covers all the critical go-to-market questions. David has over 25 years of experience assisting Western technology companies with Asia and China strategy, growth, corporate development, business development, and operations. He discusses the opportunities and roadblocks in the Chinese market today and offers advice to mobile tech companies concerned about protecting their IP in China. Finally, David shares how ADG qualifies targets and drives the entire in-country business development and technical cooperation process for an impressive and growing roster of clients.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/go-to-market-strategies-and-growth-in-china-positioning-your-company-on-the-right-side-of-opportunity/feed/0The Smart Way To Combat Mobile Ad Fraud – And Other Essential Marketing Shortcutshttps://mobilegroove.com/the-smart-way-to-combat-mobile-ad-fraud-and-other-essential-marketing-shortcuts/
https://mobilegroove.com/the-smart-way-to-combat-mobile-ad-fraud-and-other-essential-marketing-shortcuts/#respondThu, 21 Nov 2019 14:16:49 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20223App campaigns that achieve maximum reach and impact are obviously a huge win for marketers. But they’re often associated with a steep learning curve when it comes to choosing the right KPIs or rejecting the right traffic.
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]]>App campaigns that achieve maximum reach and impact are obviously a huge win for marketers. But they’re often associated with a steep learning curve when it comes to choosing the right KPIs or rejecting the right traffic. We get an insider’s view on this and more from Mikhail Biteryakov, Traffic Manager and Analyst at Joom, a fast-growing e-commerce marketplace headquartered in Russia. Mikhail, who goes by Mike, speaks candidly about his personal journey from a focus on UX to a passion for data-driven marketing. Mike, a Mobile Hero recognized for his app marketing achievements, provides his pick of strategies marketers can take to achieve success and the approaches they can use to fight mobile ad fraud and win. He also talks about the future of marketing and why dynamic creatives are the one to watch.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/the-smart-way-to-combat-mobile-ad-fraud-and-other-essential-marketing-shortcuts/feed/0How App Developers Can Increase Engagement To Drive Forward Revenuehttps://mobilegroove.com/how-app-developers-can-increase-engagement-to-drive-forward-revenue/
https://mobilegroove.com/how-app-developers-can-increase-engagement-to-drive-forward-revenue/#respondWed, 13 Nov 2019 13:40:23 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20219Most app monetization models are focused on driving purchases or delivering advertising--approaches that are a stretch for indie developers with small teams and limited budgets. But now there is a promising and proven alternative. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Chris Humphrey, VP of Marketing at Calldorado, the company equipping devs to benefit from the way users naturally engage with smartphones to communicate.
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]]>Most app monetization models are focused on driving purchases or delivering advertising–approaches that are a stretch for indie developers with small teams and limited budgets. But now there is a promising and proven alternative. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Chris Humphrey, VP of Marketing at Calldorado, the company equipping devs to benefit from the way users naturally engage with smartphones to communicate. Chris talks about the company’s multi-award-winning Caller SDK and walks us through how developers using Calldorado can use the ability to display detailed call information along with relevant features to enhance the app experience for users and increase revenues for their business. He also explains the challenges facing indie developers, details the importance of increasing customer lifetime value (LTV) and directs us to AppChat, the must-read resource devs need to keep on top of app news.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/how-app-developers-can-increase-engagement-to-drive-forward-revenue/feed/0Four Expert Strategies To Help You Gear Up For Apps’ Biggest Year Yethttps://mobilegroove.com/four-expert-strategies-to-help-you-gear-up-for-apps-biggest-year-yet/
https://mobilegroove.com/four-expert-strategies-to-help-you-gear-up-for-apps-biggest-year-yet/#respondThu, 07 Nov 2019 20:36:40 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20203Brimming with apps and opportunity (over 6K new Android apps added daily to the Google Play app store alone) the app stores are set to pull in an incredible $120 billion in consumer spend by the end of the year, according to app store intelligence provider App Annie. That's 5x the growth rate of the global economy, which means 2019 is destined to be the biggest year in mobile and apps yet.

]]>Brimming with apps and opportunity (over 6K new Android apps added daily to the Google Play app store alone) the app stores are set to pull in an incredible $120 billion in consumer spend by the end of the year, according to app store intelligence provider App Annie. That’s 5x the growth rate of the global economy, which means 2019 is destined to be the biggest year in mobile and apps yet.

That said, not all apps will be raking in the revenue. More apps mean more competition for users and a greater-than-ever need for bold strategies to ensure app marketers reach acquisition and retention targets. Marketers are challenged, whether their goal is to win audiences in high-growth markets, such as Southeast Asia (where the latest Mobile Growth Map from Adjust, a global mobile measurement and fraud prevention solutions provider, reports users just warming to apps), or to encourage audiences in mature markets, such as the U.S., to do more and spend more in-app.

Fortunately, a growing number of digital destinations (such as Mobile Dev Memo, The Mobile Growth Stack and The Business of Apps) offer marketers actionable insights to help them improve how they promote their apps in the year ahead. But it’s also a must to network with (and learn from) accomplished marketers who openly share best practices and positive campaign results. With an agenda that boasts “no sponsors, no sales pitches, and no hype,” Mobile Spree, organized by Adjust is the one to attend (or follow) for top trends and pro tips. I have distilled the talks from this year’s Mobile Spree, which took place in San Francisco earlier this month, into four key pieces of advice you can adopt to make your app (and your app company) succeed.

#1 Fight your “funnel” vision.

In one of the most intriguing talks (with one of the most provocative titles) Rebecca Nackson, a veteran performance marketer turned seasoned marketing consultant and founder of Notable, a boutique growth agency headquartered in New York, pinpointed the biggest challenge and opportunity on the horizon. “The pendulum is shifting from growth marketing to retention marketing,” Nackson told me in an interview before her session. Marketers obsessed with user acquisition and filling the top of the funnel are faced with the task of connecting the data to make sense of the complete user journey through the entire funnel. Fighting “funnel vision” must become a top priority for teams, and it will require a fresh mindset and capabilities to “put the ‘personal’ back in personalization,” she explains.

In practice, marketers will need to overcome the “artificial distinction between the user acquisition team and the retention team,” she says. Instead, they should focus efforts on building teams that cover the customer cycle. This means bringing together growth marketers, retention marketers and engineers to ensure insights feed back into product to delight customers again and again. But it also means taking a new approach to data that builds on attribution analytics to fuel engagement. “It’s about harnessing the information attribution solutions provide—how they came into your app in the first place—to determine the best rules of engagement to decide the kinds of messages you need to be sending further along in the customer journey.”

To make her point Nackson recalls her work with a streaming app client that had identified a user segment if called the ‘Late Night Crusher.’ True to the name, these were users that would respond to late-night campaigns powered by messaging and notifications that tapped into their app activities well into the wee hours. To target these users meant overriding the wisdom, and the CRM tools, that dictate ‘quiet windows’ when companies can’t engage or re-engage with users. “If you’re leveraging your attribution data in your CRM, then you can do marketing campaigns that are much more intelligent and ultimately increase the lifetime value of the users you acquire,” she says. “And, with a clear idea of where your high-value and highly engaged users are coming from, you can acquire more of them.”

#2 Know and measure what you pay for.

Approaches powered by sophisticated algorithms and fueled by data equip marketers to track, measure and validate important campaign KPIs to a high degree of accuracy. But an over-reliance on often misleading click- and view-based measurements to gauge campaign impact may be leading marketers to “over-attribute” paid efforts and pay for users they already own. It’s why Matthew Sadofsky, Chief Growth Officer and CMO at Studio, a startup that delivers coaching, music and competition to treadmill runners’ smartphones and smartwatches, provided his pick of three approaches to nip incrementality in the bud. But there are no silver-bullet answers, just “directional” approaches, he explained, because “there’s no model where you can just plug in a few numbers, and it just tells you where your dollars may be at risk.”

Newbies and app marketers with a limited budget are best advised to employ a baseline lift analysis, according to Sadofsky. It’s also a fit if your app isn’t linked to seasonal events and developments (for example, a football app that is bound to have low numbers during off-season months). In this scenario, marketers pinpoint a time period when marketing is flat or non-existent (so maybe summer for the football app), and measure the organic baseline, Sadofsky explains. After that it’s a matter of measuring how that baseline changes over time, going up and down depending on factors such as ad networks and partners. “If you onboard a new affiliate partner or new DSP, and you see organics drop significantly afterward,” he says, “then it’s a signal to dive into the traffic data and see if it’s incremental or just misattributing.”

Interestingly, Sadofsky also shared his own “similarity method,” a model he helped develop that assumes high-intent, organic users behave differently than users acquired via paid marketing. Based on an analysis of these indicators and outcomes, the model looks for the correlations that show a cohort very likely came into the app on their own terms, not triggered by advertising. Determining high intent can be a tall order, but finding a match is a strong indication that campaigns are cannibalizing organic growth. There are many models to choose from and one hard truth, Sadofsky says. “The issue of incrementality—and the requirement to establish the *real* added benefit of paid campaigns—is a hot topic, particularly as marketers expand the channels and partners they use to reach audiences and deepen their engagement.”

#3 Power your marketing with rich customer segmentation.

Winning requires customer segmentation strategies designed from the ground up to gain trust, not just market share. This was the challenge and the triumph for Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, VP of U.S. Marketing at SmartNews, Inc. The company, the first news startup to achieve unicorn status since 2015, counts 20 million monthly active users in the U.S. and Japan. It’s an audience growing at the rate of 500% annually in the U.S., powered by a segmentation strategy that delivers the right mix of news curated for each individual reader. During his talk, Nicolas recounted the steps his company took to develop and deploy an approach to engage audiences with news they appreciated without reinforcing the filter bubble. (This state of intellectual isolation, caused by algorithms that over-personalize the user experience, exposes users to news and information that strengthens their own beliefs, rather than broadening them.)

This requires an audience segmentation approach that is fiercely customer-centric. In the case of SmartNews, formulating questions to help categorize the app’s existing users allowed Nicolas’ team to identify key customer segments and the metrics attached to each. The outcome was a grid that exposed six segments, mapped according to the level of trust they have in a news discovery app and their intent to download one. His team reduced this to three customer segments likely to convert (high trust and high intent, for example), and marketing efforts focused on harnessing segmentation to drive interest and activity across the funnel. “It’s about using segmentation to help focus the content and campaigns for your audience,” Nicolas observes. Understanding users are passionately interested in politics was the insight that prompted SmartNews to produce a 15-second ad that ran during the recent democratic debate. In addition to the spot driving a significant number of downloads, Nicolas recalls, the “ability to plan campaigns against customer segmentation” is an effort that continues to pay dividends.

Marketing aligned with customer segmentation is clearly a winning combination. But marketers will also have to develop capabilities to direct campaigns at communities–groups of users defined by interests (not demographics or proximity) and bound together by a sense of trust. This is the view of Will Cady, Head Of Brand Strategy at Reddit, Inc., a massive network of more than 100,000 digital, interest-based communities. Today, he says, marketing is either focused on groups of people that have demographic similarities or segments defined by activities on social networks. Both miss the opportunity to engage people in a coherent community whose members have opted-in to improve their lives, widen their horizons, learn, share and relate to one another, he says. This is the vibe at Reddit, and tapping into these trusted conversations requires brands to develop campaigns and capabilities that “segment audiences by cultures and passion points, not just behaviors.”

It’s new territory for brands and marketers—particularly those who embrace a spray-and-pray approach to advertising. According to Cady, marketing to community and culture is a practice built on three pillars: language (jargon and slang), tools (rituals, roles and how members moderate discussion and interaction) and experience (what moves them and the trends that matter). His advice to brands and marketers: “Your best bet is to show you understand [their] language or provide a tool or experience that is exciting.” Following this advice allowed McDonald’s to bond with fans of Rick and Morty, the American animated series with a dedicated subreddit of 1.4 million devoted fans. McDonald’s earned priceless cred by messaging these redditors when it re-released its Szechuan Sauce in the U.S. in response to a shout out by the Rick Sanchez character on the show. The campaign, which took an integrated approach leveraging both paid and organic engagement, was pure brilliance and pushes marketers to rewrite the playbook on customer segmentation to include culture fit.

#4 Product is the new marketing.

Effective marketing can net high-value customers, but it’s a quality app experience that will keep them coming back. This realization is changing how product and marketing teams work together, sharing data and insights to remove friction from every step of the customer journey. Emily Nassif, Senior Marketing Specialist at Zillow, a leading real estate marketplace, shared how combining team talents has built trust in “Zillow 2.0,” a strategic shift for the company that focuses on the customer first. As Zillow moves from “an information marketplace to a transactional marketplace,” it creates products, services, and communications focused on clearing friction points for the customer, Nassif explains. With Zillow, customers can do more than search for the perfect house or apartment. The company recently launched a Home Loans division that allows customers shopping for mortgages to receive financing directly from the company. It marks a new phase of growth and innovation that requires campaigns and creatives that encourage customers to explore the breadth of what Zillow now offers—and gains their trust in the process.

This is why marketing follows the funnel in lock-step with everything the product enables and inspires customers to do, Nassif says. It starts with the logo, a house icon that shows swift movement. “It shows empowerment—-the feeling customers have when they move to the end of the home-buying process that we make possible.” Badges denote top agents that customers can trust to be great resources for advice and assistance, and paid marketing runs dynamic ads that ensure customers don’t click on listings that aren’t relevant or aren’t for sale anymore, she explains. Against this backdrop, finding the right ad creative is an iterative process where product plays an active and important role. “Setting yourself up for success means giving yourself space to test and iterate into a strong new concept.” It’s a process Nassif says moves in waves. “Teams work together to keep iterating on what [creative] wins, and then they work together to find out what the next winner will be.” It’s an approach that is “vital” for marketers that have new product offerings, she concludes, but it’s also a great way to refresh evergreen concepts and keep customers loyal as the product and marketing evolve.

The experts cited here are committed to pushing the boundaries of how marketers view and pursue their goals and the assumptions that underpin how they will achieve them. This innovator’s mindset may reveal fresh solutions to the coming year’s challenges, as you rethink your own approach to user acquisition, retention, customer segmentation, cross-team collaboration, and more.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/four-expert-strategies-to-help-you-gear-up-for-apps-biggest-year-yet/feed/0Top Lessons In Growth Marketing From A Top-Grossing Utility Apphttps://mobilegroove.com/top-lessons-in-growth-marketing-from-a-top-grossing-utility-app/
https://mobilegroove.com/top-lessons-in-growth-marketing-from-a-top-grossing-utility-app/#respondTue, 05 Nov 2019 11:33:16 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20194Marketing is effective when it is useful and impactful, and we get actionable advice on how you can be both from Giulia Porter, VP Marketing at TelTech, a mobile communications apps company best known for RoboKiller, a robocall blocker app that is also one of the top-grossing apps in its category. Guilia, a Mobile Hero recognized for her app marketing achievements, shares the channels and strategies her team relies on to acquire and retain audiences.
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]]>Marketing is effective when it is useful and impactful, and we get actionable advice on how you can be both from Giulia Porter, VP Marketing at TelTech, a mobile communications apps company best known for RoboKiller, a robocall blocker app that is also one of the top-grossing apps in its category. Guilia, a Mobile Hero recognized for her app marketing achievements, shares the channels and strategies her team relies on to acquire and retain audiences. She also shares advice from her blog, zeroing in on the key components of a robust tech stack and the importance of choosing the right “mobile-first marketing automation platform” to align with your app and your ambitions.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/top-lessons-in-growth-marketing-from-a-top-grossing-utility-app/feed/0Retention is a Rollercoaster: Here’s How App Marketers Can Keep the Wheels on the Trackshttps://mobilegroove.com/retention-is-a-rollercoaster-heres-how-app-marketers-can-keep-the-wheels-on-the-tracks/
https://mobilegroove.com/retention-is-a-rollercoaster-heres-how-app-marketers-can-keep-the-wheels-on-the-tracks/#respondWed, 30 Oct 2019 20:52:43 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20183In a market where the average app loses nearly 70% of its users within one week app marketers are on a rollercoaster ride, struggling to plug the leaky bucket, not just fill the top of the funnel. The challenge (and the opportunity) is to re-engage users early in the retention cycle.
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]]>In a market where the average app loses nearly 70% of its users within one week app marketers are on a rollercoaster ride, struggling to plug the leaky bucket, not just fill the top of the funnel. The challenge (and the opportunity) is to re-engage users early in the retention cycle, and we learn best practices around ways to ignite frequent use and deep loyalty when our host Peggy Anne Salz welcomes Jessica Osorio, Growth Marketing Lead at Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox browser on mobile and web. Jessica, whose bold mantra is to “never stop optimizing,” lifts the lid on the channels and vendors she relies on to make users come back to the app. She also debunks marketing myths and shares approaches marketers across all app verticals can adapt to up their game.

]]>https://mobilegroove.com/retention-is-a-rollercoaster-heres-how-app-marketers-can-keep-the-wheels-on-the-tracks/feed/0Learning About User Acquisition From One Of Indonesia’s Hottest Financial Services Appshttps://mobilegroove.com/learning-about-user-acquisition-from-one-of-indonesias-hottest-financial-services-apps/
https://mobilegroove.com/learning-about-user-acquisition-from-one-of-indonesias-hottest-financial-services-apps/#respondWed, 23 Oct 2019 20:20:52 +0000https://mobilegroove.com/?p=20178The explosion of smartphones, the advance of commerce and finance, and the growing enthusiasm of young consumers for mobile apps have combined to make Indonesia the fastest growing and “most dynamic market” in South East Asia. But before you take the plunge, you need to do your homework.
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]]> The explosion of smartphones, the advance of commerce and finance, and the growing enthusiasm of young consumers for mobile apps have combined to make Indonesia the fastest growing and “most dynamic market” in South East Asia. But before you take the plunge, you need to do your homework. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up with Kelvin Saputra, Performance Marketing Manager at FinAccel, a financial technology company focused on reinventing financial services in Southeast Asia. Kelvin–a Mobile Hero recognized for his app marketing achievements–gives us the inside track on his local market and his pick of app categories sure to be a hit with users. He also provides us a new framework to find, test and scale the right user acquisition partners for your app.